BEIJING (Reuters) – China’s top lawmaker and the third-ranked leader of its ruling Communist Party, Zhao Leji, spoke to journalists covering parliament on Wednesday, state media reported, a day after he unexpectedly missed a key session he had been due to open.
Zhao, 68, was not among the party leaders in the Great Hall of the People on Tuesday, marking the first time in almost two decades that a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, the party’s top echelon, was not at the high-profile event.
The session Zhao missed was the plenary meeting of the National People’s Congress attended by hundreds of delegates from across China. It was led by Zhao’s deputy, Li Hongzhong, who said Zhao was absent due to a respiratory infection.
The announcement was a departure from the Communist Party’s customary secrecy regarding the health of senior leaders.
While there was no official suggestion that Zhao’s absence was caused by anything other than illness, China’s former foreign minister, Qin Gang, missed a 2023 diplomatic summit in Indonesia for unspecified “health reasons”, a foreign ministry spokesperson said at the time. He was later ousted from his job after a mysterious one-month absence from duties, allegedly due to an extramarital affair.
Zhao met state media journalists who covered China’s parliamentary sessions on Wednesday afternoon, state television CCTV reported, adding that Zhao thanked the journalists for their coverage.
He commended the reporters for having highlighted “the important activities of General Secretary Xi Jinping”. Officials from the Communist Party’s publicity department, and reporters from several state media outlets attended the meeting.
(Reporting by Beijing Newsroom; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Alex Richardson)
