BEIJING, Oct 27 (Portal) – Former Chinese Prime Minister Li Keqiang died of a heart attack on Friday, barely seven months after he retired after a decade in office in which his reformist star faded. He was 68.
Once considered the Communist Party’s top candidate for the top leadership, Li has been sidelined in recent years by President Xi Jinping, who has consolidated his power and steered the world’s second-largest economy in a more state-run direction.
Elite economist Li had supported a more open market economy and advocated supply-side reforms in an approach known as “Likonomics,” but this was never fully implemented.
Ultimately, he had to bow to Xi’s desire for greater government control, and his former power base lost influence as Xi installed his own followers in powerful positions.
“Comrade Li Keqiang suffered a sudden heart attack while resting in Shanghai on October 26 and died ten minutes after midnight in Shanghai on October 27 after efforts to revive him failed,” state broadcaster CCTV reported .
An official obituary published by the state press Xinhua on Friday called his death a “great loss to the party and the nation” and described him as an “outstanding leader.”
“We must transform our sadness into strength and learn from his revolutionary spirit, noble character and fine style,” Xinhua said.
The obituary listed his political achievements and said four times that Li carried out his work under the “strong leadership” of Xi.
There was great sadness and shock on Chinese social media, with some government websites turning black and white as an official mark of mourning. Microblogging platform Weibo has transformed the “Like” button on its mobile app into a “sadness” symbol in the shape of a chrysanthemum.
“He’s only 68. He probably hasn’t enjoyed his life yet, has he? “He was busy all the time taking care of the country’s important tasks,” said a 74-year-old Shanghai retiree surnamed Xu. “We all are very sad.”
Li served as prime minister and head of China’s cabinet under Xi for a decade until he resigned from all political posts in March.
In August 2022, as he laid a wreath at a statue of Deng Xiaoping – the leader who carried out the transformative reform of China’s economy – Li vowed: “Reform and opening-up will not stop. The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers will not reverse course.”
Video clips of the speech, which went viral but were later censored on Chinese social media, were widely seen as coded criticism of Xi’s policies.
Li also sparked debate about poverty and income inequality in 2020 when he said 600 million people in the increasingly rich country earned less than $140 a month.
END OF AN ERA
Some Chinese intellectuals and members of the liberal elite expressed shock and dismay at the passage of a beacon of liberal economic reforms on a semi-private WeChat channel. Some said this signaled the end of an era.
[1/4]People dine near a screen broadcasting an obituary for former Chinese premier Li Keqiang during the evening news following his death at a restaurant in Beijing, China, October 27, 2023. Portal/Tingshu Wang acquires license rights
“Li will likely be remembered as a champion of a freer market and the dispossessed,” said Wen-Ti Sung, a political scientist at the Australian National University. “But most of all he will be remembered for what could have been.”
Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore, said: “All these types of people no longer exist in Chinese politics.”
Li was less influential than his immediate predecessors as prime minister, Zhu Rongji and Wen Jiabao, Wu said. “He was sidelined but what else could he have done? It was very difficult for him, given the constraints he faced under Xi.”
Adam Ni, an independent China political analyst, described Li as “a prime minister who stood powerless as China made a sharp turn away from reform and opening-up.”
Shortly after his death was announced, a glowing portrait of Li circulated in state media in 2014, praising him as a “calm and tough wall-breaker.” It emphasized his hard work and persistence in pushing through economic reforms.
Li’s frequent visits to disaster areas and his easy camaraderie in conversation with ordinary people were also highlighted in Chinese state media.
Some social media users mentioned a song titled “Sorry it wasn’t you” in another veiled reference to Xi. The song circulated around the death of former President Jiang Zemin in November last year before it was censored.
The reformist faction dwindled
Retired Chinese executives typically keep a low profile. Li was last seen publicly in August during a private tour of the Mogao Grottoes, a tourist attraction in northwest China. Social media videos showed him in good spirits walking up the stairs unassisted and waving to the excited crowd. Portal could not independently verify the footage.
Li was born in Anhui Province in eastern China, a poor agricultural area where his father was an official and where he was sent to work in the fields during the Cultural Revolution.
While studying law at the prestigious Peking University, Li befriended ardent democracy advocates, some of whom became outright challengers to party control.
The confident English speaker was immersed in the intellectual and political ferment of the reform decade under Deng. This period ended in 1989 with the pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square, which were suppressed by the military.
After graduating, Li joined the Communist Party’s Youth League, which was then a reformist-leaning ladder to higher office.
He rose through the Youth League while completing a master’s degree in law and then a doctorate in economics under Professor Li Yining, a well-known advocate of market reforms.
Before entering elite politics in Beijing, he was provincial party chief in Henan, a poor region in central China, and in the rust belt province of Liaoning, which borders North Korea.
His sponsor was Hu Jintao, a former president of a political faction loosely associated with the Youth League. After Xi took over as party leader in 2012, he took steps to split the faction.
Li is survived by his wife Cheng Hong, an English professor, and their daughter.
Reporting by Laurie Chen and Yew Lun Tian; Additional reporting by Nicoco Chan in Shanghai and Liz Lee in Beijing; Edited by William Mallard and Hugh Lawson
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