When Li Qiang arrives in Dublin on Tuesday evening, he will be the most senior Chinese official to visit Ireland since his predecessor Li Keqiang came in 2015. The country’s premier since March last year, Li is second only to Xi Jinping in the Communist Party hierarchy and he has been one of the Chinese leader’s closest allies for two decades.
When Xi visited Ireland as vice-president in 2012, it was a few months before he became general secretary, the top position in the party and one of three leadership positions he still occupies. During his visit, he tried his hand at hurling and football, met a calf on a dairy farm and discussed the 19th-century German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach with President Michael D Higgins.
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Li’s visit will be shorter but he too will meet the President as well as Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, with whom he is expected to discuss the bilateral relationship, global issues and China’s relations with the European Union. This year sees the 45th anniversary of Ireland and China establishing diplomatic relations and Li’s visit is partly in recognition of that.
The Chinese premier arrives in Ireland from Switzerland, where he attended the World Economic Forum in Davos. Perceived as the most business-friendly figure in Xi’s inner circle, Li has been in the forefront of China’s efforts to engage with the international financial and corporate worlds.
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Born in 1959 in Wenzhou in the south-eastern Zhejiang province, Li worked at an irrigation station and in a tooling factory as a teenager before studying agricultural machinery. After graduating, he started working for the Communist Youth League and went on to spend 12 years working on rural welfare in his home province.
Xi became governor of Zhejiang province in 2002 and Li became his chief of staff two years later, establishing a working relationship that has remained close. Li himself became Zhejiang’s governor in 2013 and in an interview with the Chinese business daily Caixin that year, he outlined his vision of the role of government.
“We need to reduce the government’s intervention in microeconomic activities, put the government’s hands back in place, put away the restless hands, retract the overstretched hands, and do what needs to be done,” he said.
He championed tech entrepreneurs such as Alibaba founder Jack Ma, who later fell out of favour when he criticised financial regulators. Later, as party secretary in Shanghai, he facilitated the rapid building of Tesla’s giant factory which helped to cultivate the skills and know-how that has driven China’s surging electric vehicle industry.
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Li’s tenure in Shanghai was overshadowed by the three-month coronavirus lockdown in 2022, which initially saw the authorities unable to provide adequate services. Despite the Shanghai lockdown and Li’s lack of central government experience, Xi appointed him premier and he has stood in for the Chinese leader at a number of high-profile international events over the past year.
Although Ireland engages with China through the European Union, the two countries have also worked together in the United Nations, notably during Ireland’s tenure on the Security Council. More recently, Ireland voted with China and other countries from the Global South in backing a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.
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One of the few EU member states to enjoy a trade surplus with China, Ireland is also one of the most committed to global free trade. As the EU considers “de-risking” from China and mulls protectionist measures to protect battery and electric vehicle production from Chinese competition, Li may hope to find a more sympathetic ear in Dublin.
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