China: Xi Jinping's government doles out key cabinet positions

China's new government led by President Xi Jinping — the most powerful Chinese politician since Mao Zedong — appointed old and new faces as key cabinet ministers on Sunday during the annual session of the rubber-stamp parliament.

The ministers were nominated by newly-named premier, Li Qiang, and approved by the National People's Congress. Their appointments mark the largest reshuffling of the Chinese government in a decade.

This comes days after Xi secured an unprecedented third five-year term as president, bringing him a step closer to spending the rest of his years in power.

On Saturday, he appointed his former aide and close ally Li Qiang as the country's premier in a move which could end the historic struggle of power between the two heads of the country.

China reinstates finance minister, central bank governor

Xi and Li opted for continuity in the core policymaking roles of central bank head and finance minister.

Yi Gang, 65, was approved by the National People's Congress to remain governor of the People's Bank of China and Liu Kun, 66, to stay on as finance minister.

The move came as a surprise, as the US-educated central bank chief Yi was expected to retire after being left off the ruling Communist Party's Central Committee during the party's once-in-five-years congress in October.

Reuters earlier reported that Zhu Hexin, chairman of state-run financial conglomerate CITIC Group Corp, was likely to succeed Yi as head of the central bank.

In other economy-related appointments, Wang Wentao will continue as commerce minister while Zheng Shanjie, governor and deputy party secretary of Zhejiang province, will take over as head of the National Development and Reform Commission, the powerful state planner.

IT minister, sci-tech minister to stay on

Premier Li nominated Jin Zhuanglong and Wang Zhigang to stay on as the minister of industry and information technology and minister of science and technology, respectively.

The continuity underlines the importance of their roles, as China competes with the West on the technology front.

Xi has previously ramped up calls for central and local government to reduce reliance on foreign supply chains at a time when US export controls have choked supplies of key equipment to some Chinese tech firms and sectors.

Four new vice premiers

Ding Xuexiang, 60, who also sits in the ruling Communist Party's powerful Politburo Standing Committee, has been appointed has the first ranking vice premier. He has been Xi's chief of staff for 17 year, first in Shanghai and for the past 10 years in Beijing.

He Lifeng, 68, replaced Liu He as the next economic tsar. A longtime ally of Xi, Liu was in charge of the National Development and Reform Commission .

Zhang Guoqing, 58, spent 20 years working in defense corporations before turning to politics and holding top positions in the provincial-level cities of Chongqing and Tianjin, as well as in Liaoning province.

Liu Guozhong, 60, was the Communist Party chief of Shaanxi province, where Xi has ancestral roots.

Other key positions

Li nominated Qin Gang as the minister of foreign affairs, another important position in the face of growing geopolitical tensions with the West over Taiwan, the South China Sea, spy balloons and Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Other nominations include:

Li Shangfu as minister of defense

Chen Yixin as miniter of state security

Wang Xiaohong as minister of public security

He Rong as minister of justice

What is the bigger context of the appointments?

Xi's decisions bode well for stability.

China's economy is currently struggling to recover from the three years of COVID-induced lockdowns which impacted growth and manufacturing in the country, as in the rest of the world.

The economy grew just 3% in 2022, and expects to grow around 5% in 2023 — its lowest goal in nearly three decades.

According to Christopher Beddor, deputy China research director at Gavekal Dragonomics, beating this growth forecast without triggering serious inflation or piling on more debt will be one of the key challenges for this government.