China’s new premier, Li Qiang , has suggested the State Council’s role in national policy will diminish with his description of the cabinet as an implementer of party decisions, according to observers. At the first meeting attended by all members of the new State Council on Friday, Li said the government’s mission was to “ensure the sound and faithful implementation of the decisions and plans made by the Communist Party’s central leadership”. “Each of our comrades should be a good implementer [who] … fully and accurately understands the party’s strategic intent … and ensures the party’s decisions and plans are effectively implemented,” state news agency Xinhua quoted him as saying. Li’s remark came about a week after he was confirmed as the State Council’s new head . A day before Li addressed the State Council, Beijing unveiled details of a sweeping reform plan to strengthen the party’s control over key areas including finance, technology and local governance. It is part of a bigger shift over the past 10 years in which President Xi Jinping has transferred more decision-making power – some of which originally belonged to the State Council – to party organs. Chinese premier stays close to home in his first big turn on national stage Analysts said the mission Li gave to the cabinet reinforced the view of the State Council as a body on the political sidelines. A mainland-based politics scholar who requested anonymity said major disagreements between the State Council and the party over the past decade prompted Xi to come up with a clear plan to weaken the State Council and turn it into a team of secretaries. The scholar said Xi’s changes amounted to the biggest revision of late leader Deng Xiaoping’s concept of the separation of party and government. “[Xi] has his own set [of ideas] and he firmly believes that this can guarantee the country’s governance and development,” he said. The scholar said Li was elevated to premier without cabinet experience and considered his role as more to obey commands. “Li’s understanding of the relations between the party’s top leadership and the country’s administrative departments is different from his predecessor Li Keqiang,” he said. When Li Keqiang addressed the cabinet for the first time 10 years ago, he emphasised the government’s role in thoroughly fulfilling its duties and meeting public expectations. He urged government departments to “leave micro matters to the market and society” and “strengthen macro management”. He also asked the new government to “continuously improve its credibility, execution ability and efficiency”. Li Keqiang retired earlier this month after two five-year terms as the premier. ‘He has room to do something great’: what to expect from China’s next premier Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, said the main problem with the new role of State Council was lack of checks and balances compared to the previous system with its relatively fair division of labour between the party and the government. “It’ll become a new normal that Xi makes the most important decisions, and Li Qiang is limited to some tasks that fall into his scope such as those related to his pro-business style,” Wu said. “There’s no longer a parallel system, but a pyramid system,” he said, referring to government organs taking a more subordinate role to the party. But Xie Maosong, a senior fellow with the Taihe Institute and a senior researcher at Tsinghua University’s National Institute of Strategic Studies, said Li’s remarks should not be seen as a direct signal of a weakened State Council. Instead, the emphasis now was on factoring local needs into the implementation of central leadership decisions, Xie said. “[Officials] are required to conduct large-scale surveys and research, understand the situation on the ground and combine the decision with the specific local reality,” he said. “So the implementer is not considered a machine, but a body with a high degree of flexibility and creativity. There is also decision making in the implementation process.”