Former Premier Li Keqiang, China’s top economic official for a decade, died Friday of a heart attack at age 68.
Li was China’s second leader from 2013 to 2023 and a champion of private business, but was left with little authority after President Xi Jinping became the most powerful Chinese leader in decades and tightened control over the economy and the society.
CCTV said Li had recently been resting in Shanghai and suffered a heart attack on Thursday.
He died at 12:10 a.m. on Friday.
Li, an English-speaking economist, was considered a candidate to succeed then-Communist Party leader Hu Jintao in 2013, but was passed over in favor of Xi. Reversing the consensus-oriented leadership of the Hu era, Xi centralized powers in his own hands, leaving Li and others on the party’s ruling seven-member Standing Committee with little influence.
As top economic official, Li promised to improve conditions for entrepreneurs who generate jobs and wealth.
Former Premier Li Keqiang died of a heart attack at the age of 68.AP
But the ruling party under Xi increased the dominance of state industry and tightened control over technology and other industries.
Foreign companies said they did not feel welcome after Xi and other leaders called for economic self-sufficiency, expanded an anti-espionage law and raided offices of consulting firms.
Li was removed from the Standing Committee at a party congress in October 2022 despite being two years below the informal retirement age of 70.
Former Premier Li Keqiang had recently been resting in Shanghai and suffered a heart attack on Thursday. AP
On the same day, Xi won a third five-year term as party leader, discarding a tradition under which his predecessors resigned after 10 years.
Xi filled the party’s top ranks with loyalists, ending the era of consensus leadership and possibly becoming leader for life.
The No. 2 spot went to Li Qiang, party secretary in Shanghai, who lacked Li Keqiang’s national-level experience and later told reporters that his job was to do whatever Xi decided.
Li Keqiang, a former vice premier, took office in 2013 as the ruling party faced growing warnings that the construction and export booms that fueled the double-digit growth of the previous decade were losing steam.
Government advisers argued that Beijing had to promote growth based on domestic consumption and service industries.
That would require opening up more state-dominated industries and forcing state banks to lend more to entrepreneurs.
Li Keqiang was considered a candidate to succeed then-Communist Party leader Hu Jintao in 2013.AP
Li’s predecessor, Wen Jiabao, apologized at a press conference in March 2012 for not acting quickly enough.
In a 2010 speech, Li acknowledged challenges that included an overreliance on investment to drive economic growth, weak consumer spending and a wealth gap between prosperous eastern cities and the poor countryside, where 800 million live. of people.
Li was seen as a possible candidate to revive then-supreme leader Deng Xiaoping’s market-oriented reforms in the 1980s that sparked China’s rise.
Li Keqiang, an English-speaking economist, took office in 2013 and was China’s top economic official for a decade.
But he was known for a carefree style, not for the impatience of Zhu Rongji, the prime minister from 1998 to 2003 who ignited construction and export booms by forcing painful reforms that eliminated millions of state industry jobs.
Li was believed to have supported the “China 2030” report published by the World Bank and a Cabinet research body in 2012 that called for dramatic changes to reduce the dominance of state industry and become more reliant on market forces.
The Unirule Institute, an independent think tank in Beijing, said the state-owned industry was so inefficient that its return on equity – a broad measure of profitability – was negative 6%.
Xi subsequently shut down Unirule as part of a campaign to tighten control over information.
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In his first annual policy speech, Li was praised in 2014 for promising to implement market-oriented reforms, reduce government waste, clean up air pollution and root out widespread corruption that was undermining public trust in the ruling party.
Xi stripped Li of economic decision-making power by appointing himself to head a party commission overseeing reform.
Xi’s government continued the anti-corruption campaign and jailed hundreds of officials, including former Standing Committee member Zhou Yongkang.
But party leaders were ambivalent about the economy.
They failed to deliver on a promised list of dozens of market-oriented changes.
They increased the dominance of state banks and energy and other companies.
Xi’s government opened some industries, including electric car manufacturing, to private and foreign competition.
But it created state “national champions” and encouraged Chinese companies to use domestic suppliers instead of imports.
Borrowing by businesses, households and local governments increased, raising debt that economists already warned was dangerously high.
Li Keqiang, center, talks to medical workers at Wuhan Jinyintan Hospital in Wuhan, central China’s Hubei Province, Jan. 27, 2020.AP
Beijing finally tightened controls in 2020 on real estate debt, one of China’s biggest industries.
That caused a collapse in economic growth, which fell to 3% in 2022, the second lowest in three decades.
Li showed political skills but little enthusiasm for reforms as governor and then party secretary of the populous Henan province in central China between 1998 and 2004.
Li Keqiang, center, speaks at a symposium attended by representatives of non-governmental organizations and international organizations related to HIV/AIDS in Beijing on Nov. 26, 2012.AP
Li earned the nickname “Li of the Three Fires” and a reputation for bad luck after three fatal fires hit Henan while he was there.
A Christmas Day fire at a nightclub in 2000 killed 309 people.
Other officials were punished, but Li was unharmed.
Li Keqiang, front left, wearing a face mask, visits the subway Line 5 tunnel in Zhengzhou city, central China’s Henan province, Aug. 18, 2021.AP
Meanwhile, provincial leaders were trying to suppress information about the spread of AIDS by a blood-buying industry in Henan.
Li’s reputation for bad luck endured as China suffered a series of deadly disasters during his tenure.
Days after taking office, a landslide on March 29, 2013 killed at least 66 miners at a gold mine in Tibet and left 17 others missing and presumed dead.
Li Keqiang raises his hand to vote at the closing ceremony of the 20th National Congress of the ruling Communist Party of China at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Oct. 22, 2022.AP
In the eastern port of Tianjin, a warehouse containing chemicals exploded on August 12, 2015, killing at least 116 people.
A China Eastern Airlines plane crashed into the ground on March 22, 2022, killing all 132 people on board. Authorities have not yet announced a possible cause.
Li oversaw China’s response to COVID-19, the first cases of which were detected in the central city of Wuhan.
Unprecedented controls were imposed at the time, closing most international travel for three years and access to major cities for weeks at a time.
In one of his last major official acts, Li led a cabinet meeting that announced on Nov. 11, 2022, that antivirus controls would be relaxed to reduce disruptions after the economy contracted 2.6% in the second quarter of the year. anus.
Two weeks later, the government announced that most restrictions on travel and business would end next month.
Li was born on July 1, 1955 in the eastern province of Anhui and in 1976 he was secretary of the ruling party in a commune in that area.
He studied law at Peking University and was university secretary of the ruling party’s Communist Youth League, an organization that launched the political careers of former party leaders Hu Jintao and Hu Yaobang.
He was a member of the League’s Standing Committee, a sign that he was considered leadership material in the future.
After holding a series of party positions, Li received his doctorate. in economics in 1994 from Peking University.
After Henan, Li served as party secretary for Liaoning province in the northeast as part of a rotation through provincial posts and ministries in Beijing that aimed to groom leaders.
He joined the party’s Central Committee in 2007.
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Source: vtt.edu.vn