Wang Qishan, China's vice premier, speaks at the closing statements of the U.S.-China Strategic & Economic Dialoguein Washington, D.C. on May 10, 2011.
Wang Qishan, 64, is known as a troubleshooter, helping transform China’s state-dominated economy a decade ago, taking charge of the Beijing city government after a cover-up of the local spread of SARS was uncovered in 2003 and organizing China’s response to the global financial crisis after being made vice premier in 2008. He is considered strongly pro-reform, though he has thus far only pushed for economic, not political, changes. This summer he was discussed as possibly leapfrogging Li Keqiang to take the premier seat being vacated by Wen Jiabao, but as the new anticorruption chief, his influence over the Chinese economy will be greatly diminished.