What Does the Public Grief for Li Keqiang Mean?
Living in a rotten system, people have few options to express their dissatisfaction.
Li Keqiang, former premier under China’s dictator-for-life Xi Jinping, passed away abruptly last week. The official cause of death was a heart attack. Since the news of Li’s death broke out, scores of Chinese citizens have lined up in Li’s hometown and places he worked to pay tribute to him (see here, here, and here).
The outpouring of grief is surprising because Li didn’t accomplish much during his two terms (2012–2022) as premier. He and Xi Jinping were appointed by their predecessor, Hu Jintao, in 2012. They assumed the two most powerful leadership positions in China: Xi as the head of the party and the state, and Li as the premier, who was supposedly to be in charge of the day-to-day governance of the country, especially economic policies. Yet Li had little influence or power, compared to his predecessors, because Xi had concentrated all the decision-making power in his own hands. The foreign press nicknamed Xi the “Chairman of Everything" and Li the “forgotten premier."
There were indications that while Xi was willing to sacrifice economic growth for the sake of strengthening the CCP’s rules and Marxist ideology, Li would like to continue the market economic reform launched by Deng Xiaoping more than four decades ago. But without power, Li accomplished little in his decade-long premiership.
It is important not to cast Li as a reform-minded martyr because, by many indications, he was a diehard Communist, and he shared Xi’s ideological zeal on many issues. According to Adrian Zenz, a senior fellow at the Victims of Communism Foundation, Li supported Xi’s harsh treatment of Uyghur Muslims. Li “argued that southern Xinjiang’s “3 million surplus laborers” posed a “prominent problem”, as they are “easily exploited by evildoers.” They must be put to work.”
After Xi changed China’s constitution, abolished term limits, and embarked on essentially lifetime employment for himself last year, he forced Li to retire. After being overshadowed by Xi for ten years and forced out, Li probably felt bitter because he was known as an ambitious man. A person who knew himself well said: “[Li] didn’t drink alcohol or go out singing or anything like that because his aim was the very top. He wanted to be a politician. And politicians in China have no friends because friends drag them down.” So why are so many Chinese people mourning the death of a former premier who had no friends and had accomplished little as China’s number two?
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