Li Peng

Biography

Li Peng was a Chinese Communist politician who was premier from 1987 to 1998 and chairman of the National People's Congress from 1998 to 2003. Born in Shanghai in 1928, he was the son of an early Communist revolutionary executed by the Kuomintang in 1931 and grew up under the patronage of Zhou Enlai, who sent him to Yan'an in 1941. He joined the party in 1945.

Trained as a hydroelectric engineer at the Moscow Power Engineering Institute, he returned to China in 1955 and spent two decades in the power industry, running power plants and the Beijing power bureau and leading power restoration after the 1976 Tangshan earthquake. He rose with Deng Xiaoping's reforms to become minister of power, a vice premier and in 1987 a member of the Politburo Standing Committee.

As premier during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, Li backed a hard line and declared martial law in Beijing on 20 May, days before the army crushed the demonstrations. He launched the Three Gorges Dam project in 1994 and preparations for China's crewed space programme. After his second term as premier he chaired the National People's Congress until 2003. He died in 2019.