China’s former top economic official dies at 68
BEIJING — Former Premier Li Keqiang, China’s top economic official for a decade, died Friday of a heart attack. He was 68.
Li was China’s No. 2 leader from 2013-23 and an advocate for private business but was left with little authority after President Xi Jinping made himself the most powerful Chinese leader in decades and tightened control over the economy and society.
CCTV said Li had been resting in Shanghai recently and had a heart attack Thursday. He died at 12:10 a.m. Friday.
Li, an English-speaking economist, was considered a contender to succeed then-Communist Party leader Hu Jintao in 2013 but was passed over in favor of Xi. Reversing the Hu era’s consensus-oriented leadership, Xi centralized powers in his own hands, leaving Li and others on the party’s ruling seven-member Standing Committee with little influence.
As the top economic official, Li promised to improve conditions for entrepreneurs who generate jobs and wealth. But the ruling party under Xi increased the dominance of state industry and tightened control over tech and other industries. Foreign companies said they felt unwelcome after Xi and other leaders called for economic self-reliance, expanded an anti-spying law and raided offices of consulting firms.
Li was dropped from the Standing Committee at a party congress in October 2022 and left office in March 2023, despite being two years below the informal retirement age of 70.
The same day, Xi awarded himself a third five-year term as party leader, discarding a tradition under which his predecessors stepped down after 10 years. Xi filled the top party ranks with loyalists, ending the era of consensus leadership and possibly making himself leader for life. The No. 2 slot was filled by Li Qiang, the party secretary for Shanghai, who lacked Li Keqiang’s national-level experience and later told reporters his job was to do whatever Xi decided.
Li Keqiang, a former vice premier, took office in 2013 as the ruling party faced growing warnings the construction and export booms that propelled the previous decade’s double-digit growth were running out of steam.
Government advisers argued Beijing had to promote growth based on domestic consumption and service industries. That would require opening more state-dominated industries and forcing state banks to lend more to entrepreneurs.
Li’s predecessor, Wen Jiabao, apologized at a March 2012 news conference for not moving fast enough.
EPIDEMIOLOGIST BEHIND ZERO-COVID PLAN DIES
Wu Zunyou, an epidemiologist who helped drive the country’s strict zero-COVID measures in China that suspended access to cities and confined millions to their homes, died on Friday. He was 60.
An announcement from China’s Center for Disease Control and Prevention about Wu’s death gave no cause, but said that “rescue measures failed.”
Wu’s health had been poor. He disappeared out of the public eye for months last year while battling cancer.
Wu, who earned his master’s and doctorate from the University of California, Los Angeles, had spent much of his early career working on HIV/Aids prevention in China.