Man who helped China respond to Sars epidemic named Beijing party boss

BEIJING – China has named a man who played a key role in the fight against the severe acute respiratory syndrome (Sars) as the new Communist Party leader of Beijing, as President Xi Jinping begins recalibrating the

Covid-zero policy

that has slowed the world’s second-largest economy. 

Dr Yin Li, 60, replaces Mr Cai Qi as party secretary of the capital city of some 21 million people, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Sunday.

Mr Cai, 66, became chief secretariat, overseeing ideology and day-to-day party affairs, after a twice-a-decade leadership reshuffle last month that the Chinese President used to consolidate power. 

Since 2020, Dr Yin has been party chief of Fujian, the closest mainland province to Taiwan, a self-ruled island Beijing claims as its own in a major point of contention between China and the United States. Fujian is also regarded as a power base of Mr Xi, who worked there from 1985 to 2002. 

But Dr Yin is better known for his career in public health. He studied health management at the USSR Academy of Medical Sciences in Moscow from 1988 to 1993, and subsequently became a visiting fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health from 2002 to 2003, giving him experience in two nations now central to Mr Xi’s foreign policy priorities. 

Dr Yin returned to China in 2003 as the Sars epidemic gripped the nation, helping shape the country’s response as deputy director of the general office at the Health Ministry, and attending meetings with then Premier Wen Jiabao on the crisis. He has also held leading roles at the World Health Organisation and China’s Food and Drug Administration. 

Dr Yin’s expertise could be a boon for Beijing, which logged 404 new cases on Sunday, the highest in more than a year. That surge could test China’s order last week to ease some of its strictest Covid-zero controls, which have isolated the world’s second-largest economy, stoked public angst and weighed on growth.

The appointment of a public health technocrat into one of the party’s most prominent regional roles could also signal that Mr Xi sees Covid-19 as a longer-term struggle. 

While China loosened some virus rules on Friday, it remains unclear how the nation will emerge from the pandemic without experiencing an exit wave of infections that could threaten its hospital system and relatively low death toll.

The Communist Party has touted China’s 5,226 virus recorded deaths as a measure of its superior political system to the US, where more than one million have died from Covid-19. BLOOMBERG