BEIJING – China’s former premier Li Keqiang died of a heart attack on Friday, less than a year after retiring from a decade in office during...
The elite economist supported a more open market economy, advocating supply-side reforms in an approach dubbed “Likonomics”, which was never fully implemented.
Chinese social media saw an outpouring of grief and shock, with some government websites turning 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 flower.
Some Chinese intellectuals and members of the liberal elite expressed shock and dismay on the semi-private WeChat channel over the death of a beacon of China’s liberal economic reform, with some saying it signalled the end of an era. Mr Li was less influential than his immediate predecessors as premier – Mr Zhu Rongji and Mr Wen Jiabao – Dr 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.”
“Xi will likely respect party tradition and lead public mourning for Li, as he has no reason to anger Li’s colleagues and supporters in the party, whose waning political influence is further weakened by his death,” said Mr Neil Thomas, fellow for Chinese politics at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Centre for China Analysis.
The confident English speaker was immersed in the intellectual and political ferment of the decade of reforms under then-paramount leader Deng Xiaoping. That period ended in the 1989 pro-democracy Tiananmen Square protests that the military crushed.
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