Sun Chunlan

Early Life and Regional Career

Sun Chunlan was born in May 1950 in Raoyang county, Hebei province. From 1965 to 1969 she studied mechanical engineering at the Anshan Industrial Technical School in Liaoning, and after graduating remained within Anshan's factory system, rising through worker and grassroots party positions; she joined the Communist Party in May 1973. She subsequently moved into regional party and government work, becoming Deputy Secretary of the Liaoning Provincial Party Committee and Party Secretary of Dalian in 2001; in December 2005 she transferred to the All-China Federation of Trade Unions as Party Secretary and Vice Chairman, later rising to First Secretary of its Secretariat; and from 2009 to 2012 she served as Party Secretary of Fujian province.

Career

In 2012, she was elected to the Politburo, one of the few women to hold that position, and that same year was transferred to become Secretary of the Tianjin Municipal Party Committee (2012–2014). From 2014 to 2018 she headed the United Front Work Department. She served as Vice Premier of the State Council from 2018 to 2023, responsible for health, education, and sport.

COVID-19 Response

In January 2020, Sun Chunlan travelled to Wuhan as head of the Central Steering Group to oversee the COVID-19 response, and subsequently became the principal official responsible for the State Council's Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism, overseeing the formulation and implementation of China's pandemic policies. In November 2022, her public remarks noting a reduction in the severity of the Omicron variant were widely interpreted as an early signal of a policy shift. In December 2022, she presided over the release of the "Ten New Measures" and the reclassification of COVID-19 to Category B management, after which China did not reinstate zero-COVID control measures. She stepped down as Vice Premier in March 2023. After stepping down, she became President of the International Confucian Association.