Li Peng

Premier of the People’s Republic of China (1988–1998)

• Born: October 1, 1928
• Birthplace: Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China
• Died: July 22, 2019
• Place of death: Beijing, China

Concerned that reforms should not abandon traditional communist beliefs and values, Li Peng carried out party policy both as premier of China and as chair of the National People’s Congress, promoting the development of the Three Gorges Dam and resisting what he felt were excessive reforms that could lead to instability in China.

Early Life

Li Peng (lee pehng) was born in October 1928 in Chengdu in Sichuan Province to Li Shouxun and Zhao Juntao. His father, Li Shouxun, was a communist activist who was executed on Hainan Island in 1930 by the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party of Chiang Kai-shek). Three-year-old Li Peng was adopted by Zhou Enlai, a close friend of his father. While Zhou and his wife Deng Yingchao were childless, they cared for about forty descendants or orphans, including Li. Li spent his early years in Chengdu and Chongqing. He joined the Communist Party in 1945 and studied for one year at the Yan’an Institute of Natural Science until the end of the Sino-Japanese War.

At the age of twenty, Li traveled to the Soviet Union to study electrical engineering at the Moscow Power Institute. On returning to the young People’s Republic of China, he helped build and maintain hydroelectric plants and was chief engineer and deputy director of the Fengman Power Plant. In 1957, Li met and married Zhu Lin. She had graduated from the Harbin Foreign Languages Institute. Like her husband, she had worked in China’s power production sector. Together they had two sons and one daughter. In 1966, he became acting party secretary at the Beijing Municipal Power Supply Bureau. During the Cultural Revolution, most Soviet-trained intellectuals faced persecution. While Zhou could not prevent the widespread upheaval and purges of this period, he used his influence to protect some individuals and institutions, including Li.

By the end of the 1970s, Deng Xiaoping had assumed full leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and began economic reforms to move China toward a socialist market economy. In contrast to the aging leadership drawn from revolutionary days, Li Peng was young and well educated. He was also championed by Chun Yun, an older Marxist who had managed China’s planned economy in the 1950s.

Life’s Work

Li was promoted to vice minister of the electric power industry in 1979 and then minister in 1981. In brief order, he was also made vice minister of water conservancy and electric power (1982–1985), vice premier of State Council (1983–1987), and minister in charge of the State Education Committee (1985–1988). Li was a member and secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee from 1985 to 1987. (Each five years, the Chinese Communist Party Congress, consisting of two thousand delegates from local party members to the highest leaders, elected the Central Committee to establish party policy for the next five years.)

In contrast to reformers such as Zhao Ziyang, who advocated rapid market change, Li supported reform and opening China to the outside world; at the same time, however, he was concerned that reforms should not abandon traditional communist values. Deng Xiaoping had expressed the belief that other eastern communist governments had fallen because they had first resisted reform and then implemented reforms too fast, which resulted in loss of economic and political control. Some political observers believe Li provided a balance to liberals who espoused a reform pace that was too rapid.

Li gained a reputation as an effective government official. He oversaw dam protection during a 1981 Yellow River flood, investigated a 1985 aviation disaster caused by outdated guidance equipment, and investigated the failure to contain a huge forest fire that blackened a large sector of the Heilongjiang Province in 1987. In 1985, as head of the State Education Commission, he recommended less government management of China’s universities and more student choice in courses. In 1987, some college students held protests for democracy, a brief period of turmoil that resulted in the resignation of Communist Party general-secretary Hu Yaobang. Li considered the protests a symptom of too much “bourgeois liberalism” and recommended that college students participate in work programs to develop a realistic view of the problems of China. In 1988, Li defused student demonstrations over Japanese imports.

When Zhao became general-secretary and resigned as prime minister, Li was appointed acting prime minister in November 1987. In March 1988, he was elected premier of the State Council in the Seventh National People’s Congress, receiving 99 percent of the votes. By 1988, the government had also moved away from decisions by singular leaders and was relying more on advisers in government research institutes and universities to study problems and develop proposals. At the Thirteenth Congress, many veterans of the Long March retired from the Central Committee, including Deng Xiaoping. However, the new Central Committee kept Deng as the final decision maker on important issues.

Li had traveled to the United States, Eastern Europe, and the Soviet Union several years earlier, where he gained experience in trade arrangements and joint ventures. As China’s new prime minister, Li made overseas visits to Thailand, Australia, and New Zealand in 1988. He also visited Thailand, Indonesia, and Singapore in 1990; Egypt, Jordan, and Kuwait in 1991; and Russia, Germany, Kazakhstan, Japan, and Korea in 1994. As premier, he endorsed the plan to promote coastal development but recognized the economic dangers of abandoning the country's agricultural interior. He also thought that housing should enter the market economy and be bought and sold at market rates. He considered inflation to be a major problem and cautioned against economic policies that produced fast results but were not long lasting. He also kept older communist values in the forefront, warning against worship of money, ultraindividualism, and decadent lifestyles. While many older members were either retiring or dying, some young party members began adopting the values Li espoused.

To Westerners, the most public aspect of Li’s career occurred in the spring of 1989. On April 15, 1989, Hu Yaobang died. Although he had not publicly supported student demonstrators, students felt he was more sympathetic to their concerns. Their student march to demonstrations over the next days mixed grief over the death of a leader with demands for greater press freedom, better treatment of intellectuals, and favorable reevaluation of Hu. In addition, general complaints over inflation and corrupt officials were reminiscent of student demonstrations in 1978–1979 and 1986–1987. Students expanded this to a mass boycott of classes and sit-in demonstrations in front of the Great Hall in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Divided leadership opinions, an accommodating attitude toward college students, and the massing of news media in preparation for a major visit by Russian leader Mikhail Gorbachev in mid-May allowed the student demonstrations to grow unexpectedly over the next month. Li asked students to help maintain social stability by ending their boycott and returning to school, but students called for the boycott to continue.

A speech given by Zhao on May 4 to three thousand students at the Great Hall acknowledged the need for reforms. Although he appealed to students on the need for stability, Zhao was obviously sympathetic to the student class strike. Three days before Gorbachev’s May 16 arrival in China, three thousand students began a hunger strike in Tiananmen Square. By May 17, more than one million students had gathered in Beijing to join in an unusual event of greater freedom and permissiveness allowed by the Gorbachev visit and the Chinese government’s awareness of world press visibility. While large numbers of the students sang communist anthems to indicate their support for the government, others continued to agitate for reforms. On May 18, Li met for one hour with student leaders in the Great Hall. Many government officials and television viewers perceived the students as arrogant and insulting, and very little was settled aside from an agreement to transport the hunger strikers to a hospital.

Large numbers of workers joined the demonstrations between May 17 and 18, including illegal worker organizations that handed out leaflets calling for a general strike. Unrest also occurred in Tianjin, Xi’an, Chengdu, and other major cities. These were not peaceful student demonstrations, and fears of anarchy and chaos were being realized. On May 20, Deng Xiaoping declared martial law. The offices of Li and President Yang Shangkun were used to carry out the decision. Young units of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) were brought into Beijing. Union leaflets then called for blocking troops from entering the city. Unable to reach the square, the young troops were pulled back. Regional PLA commanders dispatched seasoned troops to Beijing on the night of June 3, 1989. The hundreds of injuries and deaths of both citizens and soldiers were widely viewed on world media.

In spite of predictions that China would sink back into isolation or abandon market reforms, everyday life in China as well as economic development and reforms continued. The Chinese leadership and people were aware of the serious social problems that had occurred when eastern communist regimes had fallen after adopting both economic and political reforms. In November 1989, Li admitted that it would be impossible to say these dramatic changes had no effect on China. In April 1990, several months after the Soviet Communist Party agreed to give up its monopoly in the Soviet Union, Li visited Moscow, where he attended the ceremonial wreath-laying at Lenin’s Tomb on Red Square. He was the first top Chinese leader to do so in thirty years.

As prime minister, Li continued to work diligently on internal and external problems. In 1992, local officials and state-owned banks diverted nearly two-thirds of the funds allocated for crops to make loans for development of industry and infrastructure. Thus, local governments lacked cash to pay peasants for contracted grain and used IOUs (white slips) instead. In December 1992, Li called a televised conference to tell provincial and city leaders to exchange all IOUs for cash before the Lunar New Year. Over $500 million in funds were sent to provinces to defuse the white slip problem. Despite his efforts, Li continued to be closely associated with the Tiananmen Square protests, and the National People’s Congress adopted a resolution in 1992 that forced Li to denounce hard-line political forces in the party.

Li had been in charge of the environmentally controversial Three Gorges Dam, or San Xia project, since 1984, when he was minister of electric power. Proposed in the 1920s by Sun Yat-sen, this massive hydroelectric river dam project was endorsed by Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai in 1958. Lack of money and the political problems of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution had caused the project to be set aside. In 1990, Li revived the planning, and it was approved by a two-thirds vote of the National People’s Congress in 1992. Having sponsored its development in modern times, Li has been rightly called the Three Gorges Dam’s “godfather.” The dam displaced an estimated 1.3 million people, flooded more than 1,300 archaeological and cultural sites, and has been blamed for deleterious environmental effects on the Yangtze River and its environs. However, the carbon-free hydroelectric power from this massive project has slowed the increase in overall carbon dioxide emissions that accompany modern economic development and the rise in the number of motor vehicles in China.

At the end of April 1993, Li Peng suffered a mild heart attack and was hospitalized. He soon recovered and returned to work in mid-June. Li’s biography, titled Son of Yun’an River, was published in Chinese in 1996 in Hong Kong. He later published the autobiography The Critical Moment—Li Peng Diaries in 2010. On July 22, 2019, Li died at the age of ninety.

Significance

In March 1998, Li ended his tenure as premier, having completed the maximum two five-year terms in this office, and was followed by Zhu Rongji. However, Li maintained his high ranking in the Politburo and was designated chair of the National People’s Congress. He held this post, roughly equivalent to the US speaker of the House of Representatives, until he retired in 2003. Retired veteran leaders in China often continue to be consulted for advice and often have younger officials who agree with them and who perpetuate their political philosophy. Luo Gan, a member of the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party, carried on Li’s philosophy of regulated growth and social stability.

Bibliography

Baum, Richard. Burying Mao: Chinese Politics in the Age of Deng Xiaoping. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1994. Print. Candid descriptions of the major figures in China’s politics from 1976 to 1993.

Burstein, Daniel, and Arne de Keijzer. Big Dragon. New York: Simon, 1998. Print. In this book, economists view Chinese politics in the 1990s and replace Western views and misconceptions with a practical description of policies, actions, and personalities.

Eckholm, Erik, and Chris Buckley. "Li Peng, Chinese Leader Derided for Role in Tiananmen Crackdown, Dies at 90." The New York Times, 23 July 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/07/23/obituaries/li-peng-dead.html. Accessed 12 Aug. 2019.

Kane, Anthony J., ed. China Briefing, 1989. Boulder: Westview, 1989. Print. This book contains an overview of Chinese events during a critical historical year.

Kissinger, Henry. On China. New York: Penguin, 2011. Print.

McGregor, Richard. The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers. New York: Harper, 2012. Print.

Meisner, Maurice. The Deng Xiaoping Era. New York: Hill, 1996. Print. Meisner details the political climate and specific events that led to government decisions during the 1980s.

“Premier Li Peng’s Family.” Beijing Review 28 Oct. 1996: 23. Print. This article contains a biographical overview of Li’s Family.

“Profiles of New State Leaders.” Beijing Review 5 Apr. 1993: 6–10. Print. This official biography of Chinese leaders is provided for a general readership.

Spegele, Brian. "Questions surround Cancelation of Li Peng Book." Wall Street Journal. Dow Jones, 21 June 2010. Web. 2 Jan. 2014.

Spence, Jonathan. The Search for Modern China. New York: Norton, 1990. Print. In this “long view” of modern Chinese history, Li is portrayed in the midst of the immense complexity of governing China.

Yang, Benjamin. Deng: A Political Biography. Armonk: Sharpe, 1998. Print. Until his death in 1997, Deng was the major policymaker of China. This biography is less laden with documentation and more readable, revealing in several sections the extent to which Li actively functioned to carry out these party policies under new challenges and changing interpretations.

Zhang Liang, comp., and Andrew J. Nathan and Perry Link, eds. The Tiananmen Papers. New York: Public Affairs, 2001. Print. This is a translation of the government documents and communications behind the scenes, revealing the basis for decisions before and during the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen Square event. While Zhang Liang is a pseudonym, the documents appear to be authentic and represent the evolving assessments made by government officials. A substantial number of the documents are communications by Li Peng.