Beijing: China’s parliament named Communist bureaucrat Li Keqiang to the post of premier Friday, a role that involves running day-to-day government in the world’s second-largest economy.
“I announce that comrade Li Keqiang has been chosen as premier of the People’s Republic of China,” said Yan Junqi, a vice-chairwoman of the National People’s Congress, China’s rubberstamp parliament.
As delegates in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing applauded, Li stood up, bowed and shook hands with Xi Jinping, who was named as China’s new president Thursday, and his predecessor as premier, Wen Jiabao.
Li received 2,940 votes out of 2,949 cast, a 99.
69 percent vote share, slightly lower than Xi’s.
An English-speaking career bureaucrat, Li, 57, will oversee a sprawling portfolio of domestic and economic affairs, although real decision-making takes place in the top committee of the Communist Party, on which he also sits.
Zhou Qiang, a former Communist party secretary of Hunan province who is seen as an associate of former leader Hu Jintao, was named president of China’s supreme court.
