A technocrat wants to uplift China’s slowest-growing province. Can he succeed?

BEIJING - The coastal Liaoning province, located in China’s gritty north-east rust belt known as Dongbei, is known to be notoriously tough for investors.

Rent-seeking officials and bureaucratic inertia have made the industrial province business-unfriendly – a reputation that explains why it recorded China’s slowest provincial growth in 2025, at 3.7 per cent.

Liaoning’s new party chief Xu Kunlin, a policy technocrat, wants to change things.

And he moves fast.

At a meeting of Liaoning parliamentarians on March 6, held during the annual Two Sessions in Beijing, he publicly chastised local cadres with unusual bluntness. 

“Some cadres don’t want to serve companies and the people – they just enjoy being officials,” he said, wagging a finger. “They start thinking about their next promotion, even though they haven’t done much work.”

He also vowed to crack down on petty corruption, where officials hold up approvals unless businesses meet their demands for meals, gift cards or other favours.

He cited the case of a clerk in the housing and urban-rural development department who pocketed more than 16 million yuan (S$3 million) over eight years – for merely receiving application papers.

“Can you imagine?” Mr Xu said in front of dozens of journalists. “If someone can monetise such a small amount of power, imagine how much those with greater authority can extract.”

He also promised to tackle what he called a pervasive “guanxi” culture, where businesses feel compelled to seek political patrons instead of relying on clear rules and fair competition.

Dongbei’s revival has been on Beijing’s agenda for years. Mr Xu’s career suggests why Beijing may see him as the man for the job.

A Fujian native who holds a degree in economics, he spent much of his early career at China’s state planning agency, now known as the National Development and Reform Commission. 

During his final years there, he worked under Mr He Lifeng, who is now Vice-Premier and China’s lead negotiator in trade talks with the United States.

In 2017, Mr Xu was parachuted into Shanghai as vice-mayor. Three years later, he was promoted to party chief of Suzhou, Jiangsu’s economic powerhouse and home to the Suzhou Industrial Park, the flagship Singapore-China government cooperation project.

Just 19 months later, he rose again to become Jiangsu governor. He was appointed Liaoning’s Communist Party Secretary in September 2025.

Barely one month into the job, he signalled openness to entrepreneurs by offering to add the head of a local tech firm on WeChat during a factory visit. He quickly followed up two weeks later to help link the company with partners for a smart factory project, making headlines.

He has added other corporate honchos on WeChat since.

In many ways, Mr Xu is a technocrat from a dynamic coastal province sent to revive the rust belt.

Jiangsu is now one of China’s economic powerhouses, driven by a vibrant private sector, open markets and deep pools of foreign investment.

Liaoning, by contrast, was once the pride of the planned economy. Known as the “eldest son of the republic”, it served as China’s heavy industrial base in the early Five-Year Plans, producing machinery, steel and petrochemicals.

But that legacy has become a burden. The province has struggled to reinvent itself in an economy increasingly driven by innovation and high technology.

It has the highest ageing population ratio in the country, as younger, better-educated workers gravitate to the south for greener pastures. 

To revive growth, Mr Xu must reshape Liaoning’s officialdom culture, moulding it to be more like the pro-business, rules-based and pragmatic style often associated with China’s coastal provinces. 

He has already made the top party and government leaders at every level of the administration accountable for clearing legacy disputes left behind by previous administrations. Resolving such cases will now count towards their performance evaluations. Any disputes still unresolved after July 1 must be reported to the provincial leadership.

Under his leadership, Liaoning has also trained thousands of disciplinary inspectors to handle complaints from companies about officials.

Yet, changing long-standing bureaucratic culture, which involves moving people’s cheeses, will be a herculean task.  

For decades, many local officials have been able to enrich themselves by controlling permits, land and financing, making them gatekeepers for businesses. And they are adept at evading scrutiny. 

Mr Xu therefore faces a formidable challenge: Overturning a reputation captured in a famous saying about China’s north-east – that investment does not go beyond Shanhai Pass, a gateway at the eastern end of the Great Wall that historically separates China’s heartland from the north-east.

If Mr Xu can break that curse, not only would it stand out as a rare success story in China’s long struggle to reform its rust belt, it would almost certainly also burnish his prospects for further advancement.