Do we like Li Qiang?
Our score: 3 out of 10. Thin on his personal words and deeds, heavy on the system he serves, with no real good deeds of his own that we could source.
Li Qiang is China's premier, the number two in the country behind Xi Jinping, and he got there on loyalty. NPR reports he started as Xi's chief of staff when Xi ran Zhejiang province, then became the province's governor and later the party chief of Jiangsu and Shanghai.
The defining story is Shanghai in 2022. Li first tried a targeted approach to the Omicron outbreak, but analysts told NPR Xi pushed him to a much harsher one. A lockdown planned for nine days ran about two months, supply chains broke down, some residents ran short of food and clashes with police were reported. Many expected that to sink him; instead he was promoted, and analysts read that as a reward for loyalty.
On the harm check, we found no speeches of his own targeting LGBTQ+ people, women or migrants, and nothing on climate denial. But the lens here is bigger than one man. Human Rights Watch said in its 2024 World Report that repression in China had deepened under Xi, and called the Xinjiang policies crimes against humanity. Li is the face of that government abroad, and we couldn't find him publicly breaking from it.
His overseas trips draw crowds. When he visited Canberra in June 2024, protesters waved Tibetan, Xinjiang and Hong Kong flags outside Parliament House, and Albanese said he raised human rights concerns. Amnesty said counter-protesters intimidated demonstrators there, and said police failed to separate the two groups safely. Nothing we read says Li directed any of that. He called his meeting with Albanese “candid, in-depth and fruitful”.
A New Zealand Uyghur group also wrote to its government in 2024, asking ministers to put five issues to him. We saw no report of his reply.
The good stuff is mostly economic. NPR notes he is known as a champion of private business, and he helped bring Tesla to Shanghai. In 2023 he pledged to build “a market-oriented, rule-of-law-based international business environment”. In March 2026 he told the National People's Congress that China had met its main 2025 targets. That is what the government says, so treat it as a claim. We found no charity or kind acts of his own.