The financial hub has seen food shortages, overwhelmed quarantine facilities and clashes between citizens and health workers, generating an unusual outpouring of anti-government posts on social media.

HONG KONG (April 28): Who pays the price for China’s current Covid crisis will show the strength of President Xi Jinping’s grip over the Communist Party heading into a crucial leadership reshuffle.

While Xi last month renewed his threat to punish any cadres who fail in their virus-fighting duties, only 15 low-ranking officials have been disciplined over the weeks-long lockdown in Shanghai. And any criticism of the financial hub’s performance risks blowing back on Xi, since it’s run by one of his closest associates on the decision-making Politburo, Li Qiang.

Li, 62, once served as a top aide to Xi, and has long been included among the most likely contenders to join him on the seven-member Politburo Standing Committee after a party congress planned for later this year, perhaps even as premier. All but one Shanghai party secretary has made it to the top body since 1987, with former Premier Zhu Rongji and Xi himself among those who have advanced.

The outbreak in Shanghai, however, has raised the price of elevating Li. The financial hub has seen food shortages, overwhelmed quarantine facilities and clashes between citizens and health workers, generating an unusual outpouring of anti-government posts on social media. Some residents have dismissed his public visits during the lockdown as “choreographed”. In one exception, he was intercepted by a woman in a wheelchair who scolded the government for failing to provide enough food.

“His career prospects will be a barometer of how much Xi has secured his ‘core’ status in the party — that is, whether Xi has amassed enough power to make ‘final decisions,’” said Chen Daoyin, former associate professor at the Shanghai University of Political Science and Law, who’s now a political commentator based in Chile. “If Li advances onto the Politburo Standing Committee, that means Xi’s ‘core’ status has become unshakeable. If Li fails to do so, that means Xi’s status is not
solid enough.”

‘Factionally Driven’

With Xi widely expected to secure a precedent-breaking third term as party leader at the upcoming congress, much of the speculation over promotions in China’s opaque political system has focused on the rest of the Standing Committee. Those appointed to the panel will command sweeping authority over the world’s most populous nation and could be seen as eventual successors to Xi, 68.

Scandals that suddenly sink the careers of Standing Committee hopefuls have become a feature of recent party congresses, which are held twice a decade. In 2012, Chongqing party secretary Bo Xilai was purged and ultimately jailed for life over a sordid murder-corruption case. Five years later, Bo’s successor, Sun Zhengcai, was similarly fired and jailed for corruption.

It would be disruptive for an official so closely associated with Xi to come anywhere near that kind of a setback.

Li served as Xi’s chief secretary while he was Zhejiang party chief from 2002 to 2007, and is one of several top cadres, including fellow Politburo member Chen Min’er, who were promoted after serving alongside the future president in the eastern coastal province.

“Promotions in China are very factionally driven and, as Li is a close associate of Xi as his one-time private secretary, I suspect that he will still obtain a position in the Politburo Standing Committee, even if he does not take a premier or vice-premier position,” said Victor Shih, an associate professor at the University of California San Diego who researches elite Chinese politics.

Until the more contagious omicron strain hit, Shanghai had enjoyed broad success in meeting Xi’s Covid Zero goals. Now, the sprawling city of 25 million people has become the site of China’s worst outbreak since the virus first emerged in Wuhan, and an epicentre of anger over the heavy-handed tactics used to lock people in their homes or force them into quarantine.

Shanghai has largely avoided Xi’s wrath, despite his vow at a Standing Committee meeting last month to “strengthen mechanisms for supervision and accountability” for those responsible for controlling the virus. To date, China has punished more than 4,000 officials over some 51 local outbreaks, according to a Bloomberg analysis of data released by state media and party disciplinary authorities.

Of the 15 officials disciplined in Shanghai as of Wednesday, none exceed a district-level rank. That compares with some 630 purged within a month of the first lockdown in Wuhan, including the replacement of former Hubei regional party chief, Jiang Chaoliang.

Jiang, a member of the party’s 200-plus seat Central Committee, remains the most senior official forced out over the virus. Only four party chiefs, including Jiang and former Wuhan leader Ma Guoqiang, faced some kind of public rebuke. Vice mayors, whose portfolios often include public health, were among the most likely to receive dressings-down.

“The Communist Party is likely to punish some Shanghai government cadres for the current outbreak, but it’s more likely to direct the blame at lower-level leaders rather than at the city’s top officials, who are close allies of Xi,” said Neil Thomas, a Eurasia Group Ltd. analyst who covers Chinese politics, foreign policy and international relations.

There are other reasons why Li might escape blame for Shanghai’s lockdown, with cases beginning to recede from their peak of more than 20,000 a day. Vice Premier Sun Chunlan, whom the central government often dispatches to tame outbreaks, is more closely associated with some of the harshest measures.

Attention has also begun to shift to the capital Beijing, which has instituted mass-testing and locked down parts of its populous Chaoyang district after a rise in infections. The municipal party chief there, Cai Qi, is also a Zhejiang alumnus who experienced a meteoric rise since Xi came to power.

Deng Yuwen, a former editor at a state-run newspaper and now a researcher at the New York-based think tank China Strategic Analysis, argued that sidelining Li might make more strategic sense for Xi than risking an internal backlash by promoting him. “Sacrificing Li will not cause any fundamental damage to Xi — he could fill the position with other allies,” Deng said.

“And this will serve as a warning to other party cadres: Being a close ally to Xi will not mean your promotion is guaranteed. You have to do your job well.”