Li Keqiang

Biography

Li Keqiang was born in Hefei, Anhui, in July 1955, the son of a local official. After finishing high school in 1974 he was sent to work on a rural commune in Fengyang County, where he joined the Chinese Communist Party and led a production team. In 1978 he entered Peking University's law school, where he chaired the student council and helped translate Western legal works, graduating in 1982. He later returned to the university for graduate study under the economist Li Yining and received a master's and a doctorate in economics; his dissertation won the Sun Yefang Prize.

Li rose through the Communist Youth League, working closely with the future party leader Hu Jintao, and served as its first secretary from 1993 to 1998. In 1998 he went to Henan, becoming at 43 the country's youngest provincial governor and later the province's party secretary. From 2004 to 2007 he was party secretary of Liaoning, where he pushed slum clearance and devised the 'Li Keqiang index' of rail freight, electricity use and bank lending as a check on official growth figures.

He joined the Politburo Standing Committee in 2007 and became first-ranked vice premier in 2008, overseeing the economy, health care reform and the response to the global financial crisis. In March 2013 he succeeded Wen Jiabao as premier and was reappointed in 2018. He promoted a shift from export-led growth towards domestic consumption, backed the Shanghai Free-Trade Zone and the Made in China 2025 programme, and oversaw the government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, though his influence was widely seen as diminished under Xi Jinping.

Li left the Standing Committee in October 2022 and was succeeded as premier by Li Qiang in March 2023. He died of a heart attack in Shanghai on 27 October 2023.