Li Zhanshu: key aide to China’s Xi Jinping vaults to top of Communist Party
New Politburo Standing Committee member Li Zhanshu befriended Xi when they ran neighbouring counties in Hebei more than three decades ago
Li Zhanshu is one of the new members of the Communist Party’s Politburo Standing Committee. Here we take a dive into his background:
When Li Zhanshu was named de facto chief of staff to the head of China’s Communist Party five years ago, just months before Xi Jinping became its leader, few people expected he would one day ascend to the party’s apex of power.
But his “election” to the party’s supreme Politburo Standing Committee on Wednesday, ranking just after Xi and Premier Li Keqiang, was no surprise because Li, 67, had appeared on just about every prospective membership shortlist published this year.
It has been quite a turnaround for the former director of the party Central Committee’s General Office, whose rise to the top of the political ladder can be attributed to the fact he was the man Xi trusted most on the party’s 25-strong decision-making Politburo for the past five years.
Xi and Li became friends between 1983 and 1985, when they were in their early 30s and were the party chiefs of neighbouring counties in Hebei province in northern China.
