(Read seven months in the first paragraph)
BEIJING (Reuters) – Former Chinese Premier Li Keqiang died of cardiac arrest on Friday at the age of 68, just seven months after retiring following two five-year terms.
Considered for a time as one of the main candidates for leadership of the Communist Party, Li Keqiang saw his power gradually shrink in favor of the highly centralized management of Xi Jinping.
“Comrade Li Keqiang suffered a sudden heart attack on October 26, while he had been resting for a few days in Shanghai. All efforts to revive him failed and he died at 12:10 a.m. on October 27,” state broadcaster CCTV reported, adding that an obituary would be broadcast later.
This economist who graduated from Peking University was a supporter of a more liberal market economy, but had to comply with Xi Jinping’s preference for increased state control.
Li Keqiang served as prime minister for a decade, from 2013 to 2023, before retiring in March.
In 2020, he provoked a debate on the issues of poverty and wage inequality by saying that 600 million people in China earned less than the equivalent of 140 dollars (132 euros) per month.
Li Keqiang was born in 1955 in Anhui province in eastern China, a poor agricultural region where his father was a civil servant.
While studying law at Peking University, he befriended ardent defenders of democracy before joining the Communist Youth League, where he rose through the ranks while earning a master’s degree in law and a doctorate in economics.
Li Keqiang was the country’s youngest governor, heading Henan province, a poor rural region in east-central China. He was later appointed secretary of the Communist Party committee of Liaoning, a province in northeast China’s “rust belt.”
(Read seven months in the first paragraph)
(Reporting Laurie Chen and Yew Lun Tian, with contributions from the Shanghai editorial team, written by Liz Lee; French version Camille Raynaud)
©2023 Thomson Reuters, all rights reserved. Reuters content is the intellectual property of Thomson Reuters or its third party content providers. Any copying, republication or redistribution of Reuters content, including by framing or similar means, is expressly prohibited without the prior written consent of Thomson Reuters. Thomson Reuters shall not be liable for any errors or delays in content, or for any actions taken in reliance thereon. “Reuters” and the Reuters Logo are trademarks of Thomson Reuters and its affiliated companies.