Former Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, once seen as a reform-minded contender to the country\u2019s top leadership role, died of a sudden heart attack early Friday in Shanghai, state media reported. <\/p>\n
He was 68 years old. <\/p>\n
Li, who was nominally China\u2019s No. 2 leader until late last year, served as the country\u2019s premier \u2013 traditionally in charge of the economy \u2013 for a decade from 2013 to March this year under strongman leader Xi Jinping. <\/p>\n
During his time in the role, Li navigated the world\u2019s second-largest economy through a challenging period of rising technology and trade tensions with the United States, mounting government debt and unemployment, and the Covid-19 pandemic. <\/p>\n
In his final year in power, the economist by training had been a strong voice warning of challenges to China\u2019s economy amid widespread Covid-19 lockdowns, while backing efforts to boost employment and maintain economic stability. <\/p>\n
Li, known to use his English language skills on occasion in appearances outside the mainland, was also seen as representing a different approach to China\u2019s ties with the world, at a time when the country\u2019s relations with the West have grown increasingly strained. <\/p>\n
As the news of Li\u2019s death broke Friday morning, social media users circulated a line from Li\u2019s yearly address to China\u2019s rubber stamp parliament in 2022, where he pledged that, \u201cNo matter how the international environment may change, China will keep the course of wider openness.\u201d <\/p>\n
Li, a highly educated technocrat with degrees in law and economics, was considered friendly to the private sector. He was also seen to have a diverging policy stance from Xi, who has tightened the ruling Chinese Communist Party\u2019s control over the economy. <\/p>\n
Li oversaw much of China\u2019s efforts to prop up economic growth during his decade-long tenure and remained a supporter of the global integration of China\u2019s economy, even as he found himself increasingly sidelined by Xi. <\/p>\n
As international doubts grew in recent years over Beijing\u2019s resolve to continue the \u201creform and opening\u201d policy, Li had repeatedly told foreign corporate executives and local officials that such economic development remained the party\u2019s priority. <\/p>\n
During the country\u2019s Covid lockdowns, he held meetings instructing various government departments to clear logistical hurdles for foreign companies to resume production. <\/p>\n
\u201c(Li) was the only member of the Politburo Standing Committee to have openly advocated for the continuation of (former leader) Deng Xiaoping\u2019s open-door policy, which ran counter to the instincts of Xi Jinping,\u201d said Willy Lam, a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation think tank in the US, pointing to Xi\u2019s inclination toward state-controlled measures. <\/p>\n
Li is also remembered for his focus on addressing societal ills \u2013 with social media users on Friday also pointing to his comments noting that 600 million people in China \u2013 or roughly 40% of the population \u2013 still had a monthly income of 1,000 yuan ($137). <\/p>\n
Those remarks, made during the premier\u2019s annual press conference in 2020, served as a reminder of China\u2019s ongoing struggle to lift people out of poverty, even as Xi hailed China\u2019s efforts in this regard as a point of national pride. <\/p>\n
During the pandemic, where Beijing\u2019s policies brought large swathes of the country to a halt, Li called local officials to \u201cearnestly\u201d implement policies to stabilize the economy and support small businesses and employment. <\/p>\n
He was also the highest level official to visit Wuhan in January 2020, when the city was under lockdown and battling a surge of infections in the world\u2019s first known Covid-19 outbreak. <\/p>\n
Some of Li\u2019s efforts to bolster the economy appeared to underscore his rift with Xi, and the premier was widely seen as lacking power relative to many of his predecessors. <\/p>\n
When the premier called for the revival of street stalls as a way to jump start growth and fix a spiraling jobs crisis, his proposal met with criticism from a number of state media outlets. <\/p>\n
The backlash from party mouthpieces sparked speculation of conflict between the two most senior party figures over how to stimulate the economy amid strict pandemic controls. <\/p>\n
Li is widely seen as a protege of Xi\u2019s predecessor, Hu Jintao, who presided over an era of rapid growth in China from 2002 to 2012. The men shared economic sensibilities and rose to power through the Communist Party\u2019s Youth League, once seen as a training ground for future leaders. <\/p>\n
The faction was known for producing reform-minded leaders hailing from humble family backgrounds, but its influence is believed to have been crushed by Xi since he came to power. <\/p>\n
The relationship between Li and Hu was in the spotlight last year when the former top leader was unexpectedly led out of the closing ceremony of the October 2022 Communist Party Congress, where Xi further consolidated power. <\/p>\n
In a moment of drama during a usually highly choreographed event, Hu was escorted from the room, pausing on his way out to pat a stony-faced Li on the shoulder, who nodded and turned to watch the former leader depart. State media later suggested Hu left due to health issues. <\/p>\n
Under Hu, Li was named to the <\/strong>party\u2019s top leadership body, the Politburo Standing Committee, in 2007. <\/p>\n He previously held key roles as party chief in industrial Liaoning province and was provincial leader of Henan, an agricultural base. <\/p>\n Born in Anhui, Li spent his late teens doing manual labor with the Dongling Production Brigade in the eastern province during the Cultural Revolution, a decade-long social and political upheaval launched by late Chinese leader Mao Zedong. <\/p>\n Li was among the first batch of students to sit the college entrance exam after it was reinstated following the end of the Cultural Revolution. In 1978, he enrolled at the prestigious Peking University, where he studied law and later obtained a doctorate in economics. <\/p>\n Unlike Xi, Li is not considered one of China\u2019s princelings hailing from a prominent party family. He held positions in the Communist Youth League Central Committee during the 1980s and \u201990s. <\/p>\n His time in the top echelons of the party ended last October, when he was not named to its Central Committee during a twice-a-decade leadership reshuffle that saw Xi surround himself with key allies. <\/p>\n Then 67, Li was one year short of the unofficial retirement age for senior Chinese Communist Party leaders. <\/p>\n He was succeeded as premier earlier this year by former Shanghai party chief and Xi loyalist Li Qiang. <\/p>\n Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, said that Li\u2019s exit from power meant that there were not many reform-minded senior cadres left in the leadership. <\/p>\n \u201cThis is the hard reality we are going to face. China has departed from the future that Li\u2019s vision had represented,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n\n Former Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, once seen as a reform-minded contender to the country\u2019s top leadership role, died of a sudden heart attack early Friday in Shanghai, state media reported. He was 68 years old. Li, who was nominally China\u2019s No. 2 leader until late last year, served as the country\u2019s premier \u2013 traditionally in <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":10745,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-10744","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10744"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10744\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10745"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}