The Chinese people mourn Li Keqiang, who has always been close to the people and business-oriented. Xi Jinping’s current leadership, on the other hand, is handling the 68-year-old’s unexpected death in a shockingly cold manner.
The last time the public saw Li Keqiang, the former prime minister seemed in extremely good spirits. With a wide smile on his face, the 68-year-old visited the Mogao Caves, in the northwest of the country; the tourists present euphorically filmed the scene with their smartphones. The August video recordings deeply touched the Chinese people: the dismissed party cadres, who had worked all their lives for the good of their home country, seemed to have finally found their inner peace in their well-deserved retirement.
But just a few weeks later, Li Keqiang was found dead. State media write that he suffered a heart attack.
The sudden deaths of Chinese leadership cadres have repeatedly led to social upheavals in the People’s Republic. After liberal party secretary Hu Yaobang died of a heart attack in 1989, the funeral marches that followed resulted in the protest movement in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. And last year, when former president Jiang Zemin died, the party leadership revoked its draconian “zero Covid” policy a few days later.
Li has long been considered a reformer
Li Keqiang’s death is also a particularly sensitive issue for President Xi Jinping. The public’s deep sadness always carries an implicitly subversive message: the people not only mourn the person himself, but also the political values he defended. And the economic pragmatist Li Keqiang has undoubtedly embodied a China that sometimes contrasts sharply with the current status quo.