FILE – Then Chinese Premier Li Keqiang waves during a press conference after the closing session of the National People’s Congress in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on March 15, 2019. Former Premier Li Keqiang, China’s top economic official for a decade, died Friday, Oct. 27, 2023 of a heart attack. He was 68. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan, File)Residents mourn for the late former Chinese Premier Li Keqiang at a designated place in Zhengzhou city, central China’s Henan province on Sunday, Oct.
Flags were lowered to half-staff at government and party offices around the country and at Chinese embassies and consulates abroad. Police moved people away from a subway station near the Babaoshan cemetery where state funerals are held and many top leaders are buried.and helped guide China’s economy for a decade before being dropped from the Communist Party’s all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee in October 2022.
Though his time in office was marked by numerous crises such as the COVID-19 pandemic and Li showed little zeal for reform, he was seen as an alternative to increasingly authoritarian party leader Xi Jinping. Li was left with little authority after Xi made himself the most powerful Chinese leader in decades and tightened control over the economy and society. headtopics.com
Xi awarded himself a third five-year term as party leader and filled the top party ranks with loyalists. 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 that his job was to do whatever Xi decided.
Remains of Former Chinese Premier Li Keqiang to be Cremated and Flags to be LoweredThe remains of former Chinese Premier Li Keqiang are to be cremated on Thursday, with flags around the country to be flown at halfstaff to mourn the official who helped guide the world’s secondlargest economy for a decade. Li died Friday of a heart attack at 68. Mourners… Read more ⮕