The death of former Chinese premier Li Keqiang triggered a wave of emotions on Chinese social media on Friday (Oct 27), with the related hashtag generating over 1 billion views on the social media platform Weibo.
According to the Chinese media, Li died of a heart attack, leaving behind a legacy of his market-oriented reforms and sometimes even those policies disputed by Chinese President Xi Jinping himself.
For him, ideology didn’t matter, pragmatism did. In a party dominated by engineers, he stood out as a renowned economist, ushering in an era of startling economic growth and impressive fiscal stability.
He was also super honest, best known for publicly acknowledging China’s economic problems and working to weed them out.
Naturally, he was not liked by Xi Jinping due to his bold, sometimes offensive (to Xi), way of dealing with things.
That’s why the Chinese government had little to say when it was asked to comment on Li’s death. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning asked reporters to refer to information from the official news agency Xinhua and the obituary to be released later.
BBC reported that the Chinese government had launched a crackdown on VPN use to prevent people from accessing too much information about the deceased leader.
They fear the mourning for the popular, liberal leader might snowball into a wave of criticism for the not-so-popular, not-so-liberal current leader Xi Jinping.
Differing priorities
Both Li and Xi had starkly different priorities in their minds. For Xi, ideology has been supreme. To eliminate his opposition and shore up his popularity amongst the top ranks of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Xi Jinping initiated his “anti-corruption campaign” soon after taking the reins in 2012.
Hundreds of thousands of government and Communist Party officials at both the national and local levels were placed under investigation, detained or punished for corruption.
Li was least pleased with this campaign, as he thought of it as a major impediment to China’s economic ambitions.
Li noted that due to Xi’s heavy-handed approach, even honest and hard-working officials started avoiding fulfilling their duties while hoping to wait out the raging political storm.
Their rivalry became intense in 2016 when Li called out Xi’s policies in a public meeting of the communist party.
“We will improve oversight and accountability systems, root out incompetence, inertia, and negligence, and show zero tolerance for those who are on the government payroll but do not perform their duties,” he said in his March 5 speech. Many experts deemed his words were directed at none other than the supreme leader himself.
“Relations between Xi and Li have seriously soured,” one political source in Beijing was quoted as saying by Nikkei Asia soon after this speech was given.
Open defiance of the Zero-Covid approach
The most recent tussle between the two top leaders of China came to the surface during the years of the COVID-19 pandemic.
He despised Xi Jinping’s Zero-Covid approach, mainly because it induced nothing but destruction into the Chinese economy. He couldn’t criticise Xi’s moves directly but didn’t spare any chance to highlight their ramifications for the Chinese economy.
Referring to the challenges brought in by Xi’s disastrous management, Li said in his May 2022 speech, “The difficulties, in some areas and to a certain degree, are even greater than the severe shock of the pandemic in 2020.”
He added that there was a clear way forward, saying that “development is the basis and key to solving all problems in China”. Development, not ideology.
Watch: China former Premier Li Keqiang dies of heart attack at age of 68
“To do a good job of epidemic prevention and control, we need financial and material resources. We need development to support stable employment, people’s livelihoods and risk prevention,” he said.
He would often go out and meet people without putting a mask on. Once he visited a university in Yunnan province, without a mask, and attended a function where none of the students were wearing masks.
This triggered a viral discussion on social media, with posts praising the premier.
Shockingly, some reports emerged that authorities were censoring the hashtag #PremierAtYunnanUniversity.
Massive support base
Xi Jinping always saw Li Keqiang as a major threat to his hold on power. He was backed by former President Hu Jintao’s faction and also the 90-million-member strong Communist Youth League.
Li always enjoyed support from the ‘intellectual wing’ of the CCP.
Xi, on the other hand, is backed by the princeling faction and the second red generation. Princelings are the children of prominent and influential senior party officials; the second red generation is a smaller group of children of revolutionary-era party leaders.
Li had been seen as Hu Jintao’s preferred successor as president about a decade ago. However, the need to balance party factions prompted the leadership to choose Xi.
Last October, Li was shown the exit door from the Standing Committee at a party congress despite being more than two years below the informal retirement age of 70.
And now he is dead, just days after China fired its defence minister and foreign minister in mysterious circumstances.
As both China’s economy and Xi’s popularity kiss the ground, many Chinese think about where their country would have been had Li taken the reins long back.
(With inputs from agencies)
