China’s former premier Li Keqiang dies aged 68

Chinese former premier Li Keqiang died of a heart attack on Friday, barely seven months after retiring from a decade in office during which his reformist star had dimmed. He was 68.Once viewed as a top Communist Party leadership contender, Li was sidelined in recent years by President Xi Jinping, who tightened his grip on power and steered the world’s second-largest economy in a more statist direction.The elite economist Li had supported a more open market economy, advocating supply-side reforms in an approach dubbed "Likonomics” that was never fully implemented.Ultimately, he had to bend to Xi’s preference for more state control, and his former power base waned in influence as Xi installed his own acolytes to powerful positions."Comrade Li Keqiang, while resting in Shanghai in recent days, experienced a sudden heart attack on October 26 and after all-out efforts to revive him failed, died in Shanghai at ten minutes past midnight on October 27,” state broadcaster CCTV reported.An official obituary published by state media Xinhua on Friday called his death a "huge loss to the party and nation”, describing him as an "outstanding leader”."We must turn our grief into strength, learn from his revolutionary spirit, noble character and fine style,” Xinhua said.The obituary listed his policy achievements and said four times that Li carried out his work under the "strong leadership” of Xi.There was an outpouring of grief and shock on Chinese social media, with some government websites going black-and-white in an official sign of mourning.The Weibo microblogging platform turned its "like” button into a "mourn” icon in the shape of a chrysanthemum on its mobile app."He’s only 68. He probably hasn’t enjoyed his life yet, right? He’s been busy all the time taking care of the country’s important responsibilities,” said a 74-year-old Shanghai retiree Xu. "We’re all very sad.”Li was premier and head of China’s cabinet under Xi for a decade until stepping down from all political positions in March. Laying a wreath in August 2022 at a statue of Deng Xiaoping - the leader who brought transformational reform to China’s economy - Li vowed: "Reform and opening up will not stop. The Yangtze and Yellow River will not reverse course.” Video clips of the speech, which went viral but were later censored from Chinese social media, were widely viewed as a coded criticism of Xi’s policies.Li also sparked debate on poverty and income inequality in 2020 when he said that 600mn people in the increasingly rich nation earned less than $140 per month.Some Chinese intellectuals and members of the liberal elite expressed shock and dismay on a semi-private WeChat channel at the passing of a beacon of liberal economic reform, with some saying it signalled the end of an era."Li will probably be remembered as an advocate for the freer market and for the have-nots,” said Wen-Ti Sung, a political scientist at Australian National University. "But most of all, he will be remembered for what could have been.”Alfred Wu, associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore, said: "All these types of people no longer exist anymore in Chinese politics.”Li was less influential than his immediate predecessors as premier, Zhu Rongji and Wen Jiabao, Wu said. "He was sidelined, but what more could he have done? It was very hard for him, with the constraints he faced under Xi.”