(Bloomberg) — Xi Jinping’s new chief of workers is the best rating Communist Get together official in 4 many years to take the job — in an indication of the Chinese language chief’s tightening grip on energy on the planet’s No. 2 economic system.
Former Beijing social gathering boss Cai Qi was named head of the social gathering Central Committee’s Basic Workplace, a key place that handles administrative and logistical issues.
The appointment was made public in a authorities assertion late Monday about Xi’s go to to Moscow. Cai is serving in his new capability on Xi’s journey to fulfill Russian chief Vladimir Putin.
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The 67-year-old Cai is the primary particular person on the ruling social gathering’s supreme Politburo Standing Committee to serve within the position since Wang Dongxing, Mao Zedong’s chief physique guard, within the late Nineteen Seventies. Cai’s predecessors, together with former Premier Wen Jiabao, gained promotion to the now-seven member physique solely after holding the chief of workers job.
Cai has loved a meteoric rise beneath Xi, essentially the most highly effective China chief since Mao. The pair overlapped earlier of their careers whereas working in coastal Zhejiang and Fujian provinces. He was named social gathering secretary of the Chinese language capital in 2017. Cai oversaw Beijing internet hosting China’s first Winter Olympics, the place the nation bagged a document variety of gold medals and efficiently applied a Covid bubble.
Given Cai’s ties to Xi, what the appointment makes clear is “Xi’s higher direct management over the social gathering equipment,” mentioned Ja Ian Chong, an affiliate professor of political science on the Nationwide College of Singapore.
Xi has already damaged with precedent, equivalent to age norms and former expertise, to put in allies in key posts within the social gathering and authorities.
Extra: Xi Tightens Communist Get together Grip Over China in Main Revamp
Cai’s appointment is without doubt one of the remaining items of a reshuffle that kicked off in October at a significant social gathering congress and culminated earlier this month with Xi profitable a unanimous vote of lawmakers for a 3rd time period as president. Xi’s former aide, Li Qiang, was additionally named premier on the annual Nationwide Folks’s Congress occasion.
Cai succeeds Ding Xuexiang as chief of workers and likewise heads the Central Secretariat, the place he oversees ideology and day-to-day social gathering affairs.
–With help from Zheng Wu.
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