By ATSUSHI OKUDERA/ Correspondent
October 23, 2022 at 19:02 JST
GUANGDONG--Guangdong province party chief Li Xi was elevated to the role of head of the Chinese Communist Party’s Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) that aims to root out corruption at the highest levels, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported Oct. 23.
Li, 66, is believed to be extremely loyal to Xi Jinping, who secured an unprecedented third term on the same day as leader of the country at the party’s 20th National Congress held in Beijing, putting him on a par with Mao Zedong in the exercise of total power.
Li’s name was on a list of members of the CCDI released Oct. 22 by the agency.
He was also promoted to the seven-member Politburo Standing Committee, the country’s supreme decision-making body, at the congress that day.
The position of secretary of the CCDI is a key role that has been instrumental in helping Xi consolidate power by exposing corruption of senior party officials since he took control in 2012.
Li is believed to have won Xi’s favor by, for example, designating where Xi Zhongxun, Jinping’s father, started an uprising around the time of the Chinese Civil War as a site to learn the party’s history.
Another anecdote over the way Li gained Xi’s confidence concerns his designation of a village in Yan’an, Shaanxi province, where Xi stayed during the chaotic era of the Cultural Revolution, as a learning site for party members.
Until his late 40s, Li spent most of his life as the party’s local senior official in Gansu province.
After that, he became a party secretary of Yan’an before assuming the positions of party secretary of Liaoning province and then Guangdong province.
He will be responsible for heading Xi’s signature anti-corruption agenda as a secretary of the CCDI.
Under Xi’s leadership, two successive heads of the CCDI, Wang Qishan and Zhao Leji, were also members of the Politburo Standing Committee.
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Li Xi, claps at an event held by representatives of Guangdong province on March 6, 2018, where he served as secretary of China’s Communist Party. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)
