Reuters
Cool-headed and affable, Executive Vice-Premier Li Keqiang is poised to succeed Wen Jiabao (温家宝) as China’s next premier in 2013.
An ambitious student leader with an eye on politics since his university days, the 57-year-old is currently ranked No. 2 in thePolitburo Standing Committee. As Vice-Premier, Li handles thorny environment, health and central-regional issues and also works on the economy and government spending.
A tennis lover, Li has used his hobby to strengthen ties with other Party seniors. He is also noted for turning potential rivals into political allies.
“He never loses his temper and … he hardly ever says anything negative about any of his associates or colleagues,” said Cheng Li, an expert on Chinese elite politics at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC.
Li is widely considered to be a protégé of President Hu Jintao(胡锦涛). His personality and managerial style are similar to Hu’s, and both men are “open-minded, good listeners, careful, cooperative, affable in relations with colleagues and subordinates, and unimaginative”, according to “China’s New Rulers: The Secret Files”, a book based on leaked Party documents edited by Andrew J. Nathan and Bruce Gilley.
Early Life
Born in July 1955 in Hefei, Anhui Province, Li Keqiang comes from a humble family in one of China’s poorest provinces.
He was in primary school when the Cultural Revolution began, and, like many of his peers, spent his high school years in Mao Zedong’s (毛泽东) “ideological indoctrination and political campaigns instead of academic training,” according to Cheng Li.
A high school teacher close to Li said that he was deeply influenced by Confucianism, describing him as cautious and “a man of strategy,” according to Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post newspaper.
In 1974, when he finished high school, Li followed Mao’s teachings to “go up to the mountains and down to the villages”, and became a rusticated youth. He was sent to Fengyang County, a very poor area in Anhui Province, where his father Li Fengsan (李奉三) had previously served as government head.
Li Keqiang did manual labor in the Dongling Brigade of Damiao Commune, and the experience fostered his “endurance and adaptability to hardship, ability to communicate with uneducated farmers, and a deep understanding of rural poverty,” according to Cheng Li.
Li joined the Communist Party in 1976 and became Party branch secretary of a local brigade in the same year. He was nominated to join the Party by Dongling Village Party Secretary Peng Jingshan, for his “contribution to the land”.
Li was one of the 11.6 million people who sat the competitive college entrance exam of 1977, the first to be held after the end of the Cultural Revolution. He won a place at Peking University, one of China’s most prestigious, becoming a member of the lauded “Class of 77″.
He arrived at PKU in early 1978 and was admitted into the Department of Law, where he befriended ardent pro-democracy advocates in a period when young Chinese were “enthusiastic about absorbing Western liberal ideas,” according to Cheng Li.
On campus, Li Keqiang was “a student with an active mind and sharp words,” Wang Juntao (王军涛), a leading political dissident and co-chairman of the China Democratic Party, told the South China Morning Post in 2006. Both were active student leaders on campus and Wang claimed that they joined an intellectual “salon” together. Wang also said that “among all the younger leaders, Li Keqiang is the only one who’s lived and debated alongside liberals. He understands us, he’s argued with us.”
While describing Li as an independent thinker, Wang said the future Chinese leader would not challenge authority on major issues. Li later became known for his obedience to bosses and “non-argumentative” style.
Ambition to Hold Power
As one of the student leaders of the Peking University student union, Li was commended by the university’s Party organization as someone who “earnestly implements the Party line, principles and policies; maintains unanimity with the Party on ideology and politics; [and is] morally and intellectually superior as a student.”
Li was a “very ambitious person with wide knowledge”, said Beijing-based political analyst Chen Ziming, Li’s acquaintance from his college years and a student-activist at another university in the 1980s. Ziming was jailed for 13 years in 1991 for his role in the Tiananmen protests.
“He wanted to be a politician,” said Yang Baikui, who translated a book together with Li. Yang said he believed Li didn’t have close friends in college, explaining that “politicians in China have no friends, because friends drag them down.”
Li graduated in 1982 as an “Outstanding Graduate” of the university, an honor for top students. He abandoned the idea of studying abroad and instead became head of the university’sCommunist Youth League (CYL) committee.
Li credits Ma Shijiang, then deputy Party secretary of the university, with his entry into the youth league. Ma admired Li’s leadership skills and calm personality and had encouraged him to stay on at the institution to become CYL secretary, according to China Profiles, a feature magazine run by the league’s Central Committee.
Despite resistance from other youth league officials for his unconventional and pro-liberal views, Li was elected by the league’s 11th National Congress as a member of the CYL Standing Committee in 1982. He started his political career through the youth league, which is considered a training ground for reformist-leaning officials.
Rapid Rise through the Communist Youth League
It’s widely reported that Li Keqiang is former Party General Secretary Hu Jintao’s protégé and they have a long-standing friendship. Both advanced their political careers primarily through the youth league, the Party’s most important adjunct and Hu’s power base.
Li began working at the CYL Central Committee at the end of 1982, the same year Hu became a member of the Secretariat, the league’s top body. The two worked closely to plan the sixth national conference of the All-China Youth Federation in 1983.
In late 1983, Li was promoted as an alternate member of the CYL Secretariat after Hu personally nominated him. Hu served as first secretary of the CYL Central Committee Secretariat from 1984 to 1985, and with his departure in 1985, Li was made a member of the secretariat and vice-chairman of the All-China Youth Federation, the federative body of many youth groups in China.
In 1992, Li was slated to become first secretary of the CYL Central Committee Secretariat. A de facto prerequisite to taking the league’s top job was election into the CPC Central Committee but Li failed in the election of CPC Central Committee members at the 14th CPC National Congress.
The Politburo held a special meeting to discuss his failure, and concluded that it was not due to Li’s deficiency of ability, but rather reflected the failure of the Congress secretariat’s preparation. It was agreed that the secretariat didn’t “make clear to delegates that the Party center intended to appoint him CYL secretary, which would have prompted delegates to ensure that he was elected.”
Despite this setback, Li was appointed first secretary of the CYL Central Committee secretariat in May 1993 and became a member of the CPC Central Committee in 1997.
Li was once again under the leadership of Hu Jintao, who was now a Politburo Standing Committee member responsible for liaising with the youth league. Li closely followed Hu’s direction and kept the league “strictly in line with Party policy on all issues,” according to Bruce Gilley and Andrew Nathan in “China’s New Rulers: The Secrete Files”.
Under Li’s leadership the CYL spent more time issuing orders to young people instead of listening to their demands, they wrote, citing “internal critics”. The youth league’s influence over young people generally declined during this time, despite improvements in internal selection procedures and reorganization of the CYL structure.
Local Experiences
With Hu Jintao’s support, Li was sent to Henan as the governor and deputy Party secretary of the populous province in 1998.36It was a turning point in Li’s career, putting him on track to senior leadership. (An unwritten rule requires that top officials must work as the Party secretary of at least two provinces before being promoted to a senior position.)
Without any previous local governing experience, he became the youngest governor in China and the first with a doctorate degree. Four years later, he took the position as Party secretary of the province. His seven years in Henan, the country’s biggest agricultural province, earned him grass-roots governing experience.
Li Keqiang shined in Henan during President Jiang Zemin’s(江泽民) Three Stresses and Three Represents campaigns, which gave him glowing coverage in the Party media. His conduct of the Three Stresses campaign was considered “one of the best in the country,” according to “China’s New Rulers”.
Under his leadership, Henan saw significant economic development. By 2004, the year Li finished in Henan, the economic aggregate of the province ranked first in the central and western regions, with GDP standing at 881 billion yuan, and GDP per capita ranking moving from 28th in the early 1990s to 18th during Li’s tenure.
Overseeing an agricultural province with a weak industrial base, Li promoted the food industry to push Henan’s industrialization and agriculture modernization, showing his capability to deal with economic affairs.
He also implemented a “Zhongyuan urban agglomeration” plan targeting the consolidation of the capital Zhengzhou and eight other cities in Henan to promote urbanization.
The macro socio-economic development plan was a “thinking ahead” movement, said Mao Hanying, vice-chairman of the Regional Science Association of China.
In 2011, when Li was already vice-premier, the Zhongyuan plan was further reinforced.
But Li’s accomplishments have been overshadowed by scandals that broke under his watch.
Within three years of his arrival in Henan, a series of tragic fires broke out in the inland province. From 1999 to 2000, three fires in Nanyang, Jiaozuo and Luoyang killed 19, 74 and 309 people respectively, earning Li the nickname “Three Fires Li”.
Though Li dashed to the scene to direct rescue work, his responses were considered “slow and ineffectual”, according to “China’s New Rulers: The Secret Files”, a book based on leaked Party documents.
Four months after the Luoyang fire, the State Councilimplemented a leadership responsibility system to punish leaders responsible for disasters similar to the fires in Henan.
He was also criticized for his handling of a major AIDS/HIV epidemic in Henan, during which thousands of people who sold plasma to illegal blood banks were infected with HIV, which led to the further infection of hundreds of thousands of people through tainted blood transfusions.
Li Keqiang didn’t acknowledge the problem until then vice-premier Wu Yi (吴仪) visited some AIDS villages in Henan. AIDS activists and NGOs have been very critical of Li’s lack of action as a provincial chief, according to Cheng Li.
On the other hand, the Hong Kong-based pro-Beijing Ta Kung Pao newspaper reported that during his time in office in Henan, Li built a solid foundation to fight against AIDS.
When Li was appointed Liaoning Party boss in 2004, some say bad luck followed him. Shortly after moving there, 214 miners died following a massive gas explosion. Nevertheless, he impressed many by his efforts to revitalize the nation’s old heavy industrial base. While the provincial GDP for Liaoning was 687 billion yuan in 2004, it increased to 1.1 trillion yuan in 2007.
Liaoning boosted its economy by an ocean-oriented opening-up project named the “five spots and one line”, which sought to further develop the province’s coastal economic zone and open it up to Northeast Asia. “We should grasp the chance and make full use of the unique advantages as a coastal province to speed up development and revitalize the industrial base,” said Li.
Back to Beijing
In 2007, Li was named to the powerful Politburo Standing Committee and in 2008 was tapped as executive vice-premier of the State Council in 2008, in charge of environmental, health, and central-regional issues, as well as development, reform and commodity prices, according to the China News Service.
Li has faced several food safety scandals in recent years. In 2008, a tainted milk powder scandal erupted when milk products were found to contain the industrial compound melamine, killing at least six children, making almost 300,000 ill and destroying the credibility of China’s dairy industry. Li was the first senior official to meet victim families, visiting children who were in a Hebei hospital after drinking adulterated milk. Following the scandal, Li was appointed chairperson of the newly founded State Council Food Safety Commission in 2010. However, China continues to be hit by food safety problems.
In 2011, another scandal erupted when it was found cooking oil was being collected from sewers. Li announced harsher punishments and better supervision of food safety problems. “Food safety is an important issue that concerns everyone,” Li said.
Ties with other Leaders
Li owes much of his rise to the support and patronage of his former boss, Hu Jintao. Their relationship is “widely seen as the most compelling explanation for Li’s rapid promotions over the past two decades”, according to Cheng Li.
Some foreign analysts have described Li as a 13-year-younger carbon copy of Hu Jintao, and he indeed shares some similarities with his patron: both men are natives of Anhui, come from humble family backgrounds, and were student leaders in their college years; they were the youngest provincial leaders of their time and took positions in the Party as opposed to the government; both were long considered to take over as top national leaders, have low-profile personalities and are even-tempered.
Li is considered to be a member of the Tuanpai, a Party faction comprising Party officials who came up through the youth league, which is Hu’s power base in the Party.
Li owes his early career in the league to Hu Qili (胡启立), former member of the Secretariat of the CYL Central Committee and a Standing Committee member of the Politburo before 1989. Hu picked Li in 1982 when Hu, then a member of thesecretariat of the CPC Central Committee, was recruiting recent graduates from Beijing’s top universities for high administrative positions.
Song Defu (宋德福), Hu Jintao’s successor and Li’s predecessor as the first secretary of the CYL Central Committee Secretariat, also formed a very close working relation with Li. As deputy head of the Organization Department in the 1990s, Song promoted many young officials with youth league backgrounds, including Li.
Li established good relations with colleagues in the league including Liu Yandong (刘延东) and Wang Zhaoguo (王兆国), both of whom became Politburo members.
In 1991, Li co-wrote a book with another tuanpai leader, Li Yuanchao (李源潮), entitled “Strategic Choice to Prosperity”, when both men pursued graduate studies at Peking University and also worked in the CYL Central Committee.
Another author of the book, their instructor Li Yining (厉以宁), is one of China’s most well-known economists and an advocate of market reform.
Li has made annual visits to see the widow of Hu Yaobang (胡耀邦), former Party general secretary and a former CYL leader, a pilgrimage he holds in common with Hu Jintao, Wen Jiabaoand Xi Jinping (习近平).
Fifth Generation
Cheng Li, China expert at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC, called Li Keqiang one of “Hu’s two favored candidates” to succeed him as China’s top leader. However, in the era of consensus-based politics, Hu does not have the absolute power and authority to choose his own successor.
Despite Hu Jintao’s full support, Li’s performance as provincial leader in Henan had raised doubts among other top leaders. His career as provincial leader “has been marked by tragedies that many in Beijing view as signs of weakness as a leader,” according to “China’s New Rulers”. Instead of taking the reins from Hu, Li is widely expected to succeed Wen Jiabao as premier in 2013.
Low-profile family
A commoner from a poor province, Li Keqiang’s father was a middle-ranking official and an “old revolutionary”. Li Fengsan married his second wife, Li Keqiang’s mother, during his tenure as Fengyang county head. The elder Li died more than a decade ago, but his brother and other family members still live in a small town in Anhui Province as ordinary people.
Li Keqiang’s younger brother, Li Keming (李克明), works as deputy chief of China’s National Tobacco Monopoly Bureau.
Li Keqiang is married to Cheng Hong (程红), a foreign language professor at >Capital University of Economics and Business, and the two have a daughter who graduated from Peking University. She is studying in the United States.
Unlike her husband, Cheng was born in a cadre family in Henan province. Her father, Cheng Jinrui (程金瑞), was former deputy secretary of the CYL’s Henan Committee, while her mother, Liu Yiqing (刘益清), was a reporter for Xinhua News Agency.
A Peek into Li’s Views
The premier-in-waiting has a liberal past; in college, he befriended free thinkers during an era of liberal ferment and joined intellectual gatherings organized by liberals, many of whom became dissidents after the 1989 crackdown.
Li was close to a British-educated professor, Gong Xiangrui(龚祥瑞), who advocated separation of powers, a multi-party system and constitutional democracy, Li classmate Jiang Ming’an told the mainland China newspaper Southern Weekend in 2007.
Li impressed his professors and classmates with “his grasp of Western political ideals” and expressed an enthusiasm for political reform in his speeches, according to China observer Willy Lam. Observers believe that his concern for political modernization has “hardly wavered,” Lam wrote.
“The Li Keqiang that I knew in the past was quite bold. He was high-minded, bold and idealistic,” Wang Juntao, who has been in exile since 1994, told Reuters.
Yang Baikui, a former classmate who is no longer in contact with Li, said he could only speculate on the impact of Li’s college years on his leadership at the top of the Party.
“I think it could make him more open and inclusive, more democratic, if the conditions allow. His ideas of rule of law might go deeper,” Yang said.
In the Haidian District People’s Congress election in 1980 when students at Peking University and other schools were allowed to compete, Li Keqiang backed a relatively moderate candidate, Zhang Wei, who put economic reform as the priority.
“Their view wasn’t against political reform, but it was that economic reform was more urgent,” Chen Ziming said. “Li Keqiang was a bit more conservative in that way, but he also wanted reform.”
Li Keqiang’s true political inclinations, of course, remain unknown. “That would be too dangerous,” said former classmate Yang.
In contrast, Li’s views on economic reform are unambiguous.
“Reform and opening-up are the driving forces behind our development. China will be steadfast in promoting reform,” Li wrote in a 2011 op-ed published by the Financial Times.
China cannot delay reforms to rebalance its economy, Li said in a speech at the 2012 China Development Forum. “Reforms have entered a tough stage,” he said, adding that China would “deepen reforms on taxes, the financial sector, prices, income distribution and seek breakthroughs in key areas to let market forces play a bigger role in resource allocation.”
Li endorsed a February 2012 report by the World Bank and theDevelopment Research Centre, which urged sweeping economic reforms, including scaling back state-owned enterprises, overhauling local government finances, and promoting competition and entrepreneurship.
