Li Peng

Li Peng (20 October 1928 – 22 July 2019) was a Chinese politician who served as the fourth Premier of the People's Republic of China from 1987 to 1998, and as the Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, China's top legislative body, from 1998 to 2003.

In 1931, Li's father, then working undercover in Hainan, was captured and executed by the Kuomintang.

Li was believed to have met Deng Yingchao, wife of senior Communist leader Zhou Enlai, in Chengdu in 1939, who then took him to Chongqing to meet Zhou, though Zhou was in the Communist base of Yan'an, and they did not meet until late 1940.

In 1941, when Li was twelve, Zhou sent Li to Yan'an, where Li studied until 1945.

In 1941, Li Peng began studying at the Yan'an Institute of Natural Science (a predecessor of the Beijing Institute of Technology).

As a seventeen-year-old, in 1945, Li joined the Chinese Communist Party.

In July 1946, Li was sent to work in Zhangjiakou.

According to his own recollection, in 1947, he journeyed through Shandong and North Korea, eventually ending up in Harbin where he began managing some work for a lard processing plant.

In 1948, Li Peng was sent to study at the Moscow Power Engineering Institute, majoring in hydroelectric engineering.

A year later, in 1949, Zhou Enlai became Premier of the newly declared People's Republic of China.

He escaped the political turmoil of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s due to his political connections and his employment in the company.

Li graduated in 1954.

During his time in the Soviet Union, Li was the head of the Chinese Students Association in the Soviet Union.

When Li returned to China in 1955, the country was firmly under the control of the Communist Party.

Li took part in technical, then management work in the power industry, beginning his career in Northeast China.

At the outset of the Cultural Revolution, Li was sent to Beijing to head up the municipal power bureau.

He played a leading role in the construction of the Tuhe Powerplant in Tangshan and the Gaojing Powerplant in Beijing.

During his time at Gaojing, he worked three days and three nights supervising the construction of the site.

After Deng Xiaoping became China's leader in the late 1970s, Li took a number of increasingly important and powerful political positions, eventually becoming premier in 1987.

On 4 October 1974, he was struck by a vehicle while riding his bicycle home from work.

In 1976, Li was dispatched to affected regions of the Tangshan earthquake as head of the power restoration efforts.

Li advanced politically after the ascent of Deng Xiaoping, and served as the Vice Minister and later Minister of Power, the Communist Party secretary of the North China Electric Power Administration Bureau between 1979 and 1983, as well as the vice minister of Water Conservancy and Power between 1982 and 1983.

Much of Li's rapid political promotion was due to the support of Party elder Chen Yun.

Li joined the Central Committee at the Twelfth National Congress in 1982.

In 1985 he was named minister of the State Education Commission, and was elected to the Politburo and the Party Secretariat.

As Premier, Li was the most visible representative of China's government who backed the use of force to quell the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.

During the protests, Li used his authority as premier to declare martial law and, in cooperation with Deng, who was the Chairman of the Central Military Commission, declared military law and the suppression of the 1989 Tiananmen square protestors, ultimately resulting in a massacre.

Li advocated a largely conservative approach to Chinese economic reform, which placed him at odds with General Secretary Zhao Ziyang, who fell out of favour in 1989.

After Zhao was removed from office, Li promoted a conservative socialist economic agenda but lost influence to incoming vice premier Zhu Rongji, and was unable to prevent the increasing market liberalization of the Chinese economy.

During his time in office, he helmed the controversial Three Gorges Dam project.

He and his family managed a large Chinese power monopoly, which the Chinese government broke up after his term as premier expired.

Li died at the age of 90 in Beijing.

Li was born as Li Yuanpeng at his family house in Shanghai French Concession, now in 545 Yanan Road, Huangpu District in Shanghai.

His family has ancestral roots in Chengdu, Sichuan.

He was the son of Li Shuoxun, one of the earliest CCP revolutionaries, who was the political commissar of the Twentieth Division during the Nanchang uprising, and Zhao Juntao, also an early Communist operative.

For much of the 1990s Li was ranked second in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) hierarchy behind then Party General Secretary Jiang Zemin.

He retained his seat on the CCP Politburo Standing Committee until his retirement in 2002.

Li was the son of an early Communist revolutionary, Li Shuoxun, who was executed by the Kuomintang.

After meeting Zhou Enlai in Sichuan, Li was raised by Zhou and his wife, Deng Yingchao.

Li trained to be an engineer in the Soviet Union and worked at an important national power company after returning to China.