Li Keqiang, who spent a decade as China’s premier and in President Xi Jinping’s shadow, died of a heart attack in Shanghai on Friday, at the age of 68.
It was a sad end for a politician whose career was cut short by a Communist Party power play.
He is best known outside of China for the Li Keqiang Index, created by The Economist to measure the nation’s economic growth. Finding the official gross domestic product number unreliable, Li, a policy wonk, preferred to use high-frequency indicators, such as railway freight traffic, electricity consumption and bank loans, to figure out how well the economy is going.
But alas, an economist by training, Li never really got a chance to realize his ambition and use his knowledge to steer the economy. In theory, the premier heads the State Council, the executive organ of a sprawling bureaucracy that oversees divisions in charge of China’s fiscal and monetary policies, such as the Ministry of Finance and the People’s Bank of China. In practice, Li sat at the table, but never had any say.
This is because institutions such as the PBOC are also administered by the Communist Party, via the Central Financial and Economic Affairs Commission, which is chaired by Xi and run by his confidantes. For years, savvy investors in China brushed aside former PBOC Gov. Yi Gang, because he was not the central bank’s party secretary. That post went to Guo Shuqing — who was seen as the more powerful central banker.
In the past, China’s bureaucracy was rigid and hierarchical. Theoretically, as the second highest-ranking official on the seven-member Politburo Standing Committee, the premier should be China’s second-most powerful man. People look at the committee ranking to speculate who would ascend to the top job in future administrations.
Xi uprooted this tradition and structure. It no longer matters whether a politician ranks No. 2, 3 or 7, or if he is a committee member at all. He is golden, if he has Xi’s trust. Liu He, the 71-year-old retired vice premier and Xi’s childhood friend, still has a big seat at the table. Despite his absence from the limelight, the former economic czar remains the person to meet for high-ranking foreign delegations visiting Beijing.
Li’s light dimmed alongside Xi’s ascent. In the spring of 2022, when "zero-COVID" was the president’s top policy directive and Shanghai was under a total lockdown, Li emerged with his own voice, pressing officials to stabilize the economy and not go overboard with COVID-19 controls.
He provided a beacon of hope to people exhausted by quarantines and draconian stay-home orders. But nothing came about. Li ended up fading quietly into retirement this March, replaced by Xi’s right-hand man Li Qiang.
Now, he is no more. RIP to the premier, his talent and his unrealized aspirations. We Chinese say goodbye with a heavy, broken heart.