REUTERS/Wang Zhao/Pool
- Li Keqiang, China's former premier, died Friday of a heart attack in Shanghai, according to state media.
- Li, who was 68, was China's top economic official for a decade.
- He was an advocate for private businesses.
Former Premier Li Keqiang, China's top economic official for a decade, died Friday of a heart attack in Shanghai, state media CCTV reported. He was 68.
Li was China's No. 2 leader from 2013 to 23 and an advocate for private business. But he was left with little authority after Chinese President Xi Jinping made himself the most powerful Chinese leader in decades, and tightened control over the economy and society.
As Xi's power grew in the last decade, Li was seen as an advocate for the old guard of China's leadership, with close ties to Xi's predecessor, the former President Hu Jintao. Observers initially believed Li was meant to succeed Hu as the paramount leader of China, but Xi was instead chosen by a leadership that was far more decentralized than today's.
Largely seen as a reformist who sought to open China to global business, Li's philosophy would clash with Xi's own push for state ownership and stricter regulations. Yet he was increasingly sidelined by Xi, who gathered power around himself and encroached upon Li's authority by making sweeping changes to economic guidelines.
Before he was taken off China's top leadership in October 2022, Li had been the only official in the seven-person Standing Committee who wasn't a loyalist to Xi.
Li grew up in the province of Anhui, where his father was a local official. He would rise through the ranks of the Chinese Communist Party under its Youth League, where he met and started working closely with Hu, who was making a name for himself in the organization in the early 1980s.
Li later went on to be appointed governor of the Henan and Liaoning provinces, before becoming a vice premier in 2008 and China's premier in 2013.