Section:GDN 1J PaGe:8 Edition Date:190724 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 23/7/2019 17:50 cYanmaGentaYellowbla
- The Guardian Wednesday 24 July 2019
8 Obituaries
L
i Peng, who has died
aged 90, was one of
the most infl uential
politicians in China
during the fi rst
two decades of the
“ reform and opening
up” process begun
under Deng Xiaoping in 1978. He had
perfect revolutionary credentials,
and roots within the Communist
party , but will be remembered
most for his role in the events of
1989, which saw the suppression
of student demonstrators by the
armed forces in which hundreds if
not thousands died.
As premier and head of govern-
ment , Li Peng ordered th e pro-
democracy protesters in Tianan-
men Square in May of that year to
return to their campuses. After this
failed, he declared martial law on 20
May , and issued the order for crack
troops from the People’s Liberation
Army to move in on the demonstra-
tion in the early hours of 4 June.
The pictures of tanks and sol-
diers training their guns on the
youth of modern China w ere shown
across the world and Li Peng wasLi Peng
Hardline Chinese premier
who sent in crack troops
to suppress the protesters
of Tiananmen Square
and lawmaking group, the National
People’s Congress, from 1998 to 2003.
He attempted to clear his name in
2004 , with an essay published on the
100th anniversary of Deng’s birth,
and also wrote a memoir, The Key
Moment, which he was apparently
denied permission to release by the
government he had served so long.
Li was born in Sichuan province, in
the south-west of China. His father,
Li Shuoxun, was an early Communist
party martyr, shot by the nationalist
K uomintang army when Li was three.
He was adopted by Zhou Enlai, who
was to go on to be one of the great
heroes of China’s struggle against
both the Japanese in the 1930s and
40s and the nationalists in the civil
war from 1945 to 1949 ; and of the
construction of the People’s Republic
of China from 1949 onwards. The
relationship with Zhou was to be
critical in Li’s career, although he did
not come to prominence till almost a
decade after Zhou’s death.
Li Peng followed almost the clas-
sic route for Chinese communist
leaders who belonged to what has
been called the “second and third
generation leadership” – those
who immediately succeeded Mao
Zedong. He was a technocrat, edu-
cated from 1948 to 1955 at the Mos-
cow Power Engineering Institute
in Russia before returning to China
to occupy a number of positions in
the power and engineering sector
throughout the late 50s and 60s.
He was to keep a lower profi le
during the Cultural Revolution from
1966 onwards, a period that saw
many senior party leaders and intel-
lectuals persecuted and imprisoned.
He spent his time in Liaoning, in the
north-east of China, before return-
ing to Beijing to work in the power
supply bureau of the revolutionary
committee there. His fi rst importantthe most visible leader associated
with the crackdown. The image that
will be irrevocably associated with
this was his meeting with student
leaders before 20 May, when he sat,
in the Great Hall of the People, in
green military fatigues, growing
visibly irritated and impatient with
the young, rebellious group leaders
ranged around him.
Yet secret papers purportedly
recording the top-level discussions
in the weeks and days before the
event, which were subsequently
released, show that Li Peng was little
more than a willing executioner : the
real orders had come from the group
of senior leaders who had ostensi-
bly retired long before. The para-
mount leader, Deng Xiaoping, had
been the most instrumental, and
without his support it is unlikely
the PLA would have moved in.
But Li Peng was to be reviled
from that point on and was called
“ the Butcher of Beijing ”. His visits
abroad, particularly to the west,
were to be met with hostility, even
though he was to continue as pre-
mier till 1998, and then to serve as
the head of the Chinese parliamentmove up the government system
came in 1979, just after the reform
process started, when he was made
power industry minister, and vice-
minister of water resources.
None of these titles were to pre-
pare him for the role he would take,
over the next few years, as one of th e
“hardliners” opposed to the over-
openness of the Chinese economy in
the mid to late 80s, and who urged a
greater closeness to what they inter-
preted as the spirit of the Communist
party, and state control of politics
and the economy. Li Peng’s move
into the upper echelon of Chinese
politics was to coincide with this
debate, built around the fi gures of
the then party secretary Hu Yaobang ,
and then, after Hu’s fall in 1987, his
replacement, Zhao Ziyang ; Li took
Zhao’s place in turn as premier.
Both were to wrestle with the
paradox of an expanding economy,
which was fundamentally changing
China, and a political system that
remained resistant to change. Party
thinkers in the mid-80s seriously
considered the option of introduc-
ing democratic reforms modelled on
the northern European countries.
But increases in infl ation, cor-
ruption, and dissent and confusion
within the party meant that, by
1989, Chinese society had become
divided and unstable, and what
political will there had been to try
out these reforms had gone.
Contemporary commentators
may have been unfair on Li Peng.
While he was no liberal, in fact he
was a supporter of the economic
reforms, and of party reforms,
though not at the pace demanded by
some of the more radical in China.
He was instrumental in moves to
keep China’s bid for entry to the
World Trade Organisation on track,
and had great infl uence over China’s
continuing economic reforms.
One other feature of his life that
typifi es Chinese elite politicians of
his generation was the criticism of
the wealth and infl uence accrued by
his family members. Li’s wife, Zhu
Lin, was a senior offi cial in the state
power sector and his daughter, Li
Xiaolin, it was later revealed in the
Panama Papers, held off shore com-
panies. But when Xi Jinping began
an extensive anti-corruption drive
after taking power in 2013, Li’s family
did not fi gure among the main tar-
gets. In 2016 his son Li Xiaopeng was
appointed transport minister , con-
tinuing the family political tradition.
A controversial legacy was the
Three Gorges Dam project , which
Li Peng supported, and pushed
through in 1992 despite consider-
able popular opposition in China.
This, more than anything else, with
its complex mixture of success and
failure, and residue of anger and
disappointment, remains the most
fi tting monument to his career.
He is survived by Zhu Lin, and his
children, Li Xiaolin, Li Xiaopeng,
and another son, Li Xiaoyong.
Kerry BrownLi Peng, politician, born 20 October
1928; died 22 July 2019Li Peng was
a supporter
of economic
and party
reforms, but
one of his most
controversial
legacies was the
Three Gorges
Dam project,
which he pushed
through in 1992
despite popular
opposition
FORREST ANDERSON/
LIFE/GETTY IMAGESHe was
called ‘the
butcher
of Beijing’
and his
visits to
the west
were met
with
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