{"id":7398,"date":"2023-10-31T04:14:13","date_gmt":"2023-10-31T04:14:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/zoominfinancial.com\/business\/other-leaders-are-corrupt-li-keqiang-mourning-poses-challenge-for-beijing\/"},"modified":"2023-10-31T04:14:13","modified_gmt":"2023-10-31T04:14:13","slug":"other-leaders-are-corrupt-li-keqiang-mourning-poses-challenge-for-beijing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zoominfinancial.com\/?p=7398","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Other leaders are corrupt\u2019: Li Keqiang mourning poses challenge for Beijing"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free<\/p>\n<p class=\"article__content-sign-up-topic-description\"><span>Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><iframe class=\"article__content-sign-up-iframe close\" scrolling=\"no\" id=\"signUpIframe\" data-prev-url=\"\/register\/in-article-sign-up?ft-content-uuid=fb38c49e-620f-440a-abde-77146391f773\"><\/iframe><\/div>\n<div id=\"article-body\">\n<p>Hundreds of mourners have flocked to Li Keqiang\u2019s childhood home to pay their respects to a reformist politician many saw as the \u201cpeople\u2019s premier\u201d, creating a potential political challenge for Chinese president Xi Jinping.<\/p>\n<p>The popular outpouring for Li, who died suddenly last week aged 68, was mirrored in other cities and on Chinese social media, with many people contrasting the late premier\u2019s relatively down-to-earth style with that of his more aloof colleagues.<\/p>\n<p>The rare public outburst of grief for Li, who was largely sidelined by Xi while in office, presents a delicate situation for China\u2019s ruling Communist party as it contends with a lagging economic recovery and geopolitical tensions, analysts said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe have a lot of other leaders who are corrupt but he wasn\u2019t one of them,\u201d said one woman who attended the same school as Li and had joined a crowd of mourners, watched over by rows of guards, placing flowers around the home where Li spent part of his childhood in Hefei, Anhui province.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe cared for the poorest of society,\u201d she added, wiping back tears.<\/p>\n<p>A trained economist who headed Xi\u2019s cabinet for a decade between 2013 and 2023 before he was replaced in March, Li was once seen as a possible contender for president. During his tenure as premier, China\u2019s second-highest role, Li advocated for market-oriented reform and anti-poverty programmes. But he was gradually sidelined under Xi, China\u2019s most powerful leader since Mao Zedong.<\/p>\n<p>The death of a senior leader is often a sensitive moment for the Communist party, which must balance paying respects to former officials and defining their legacy to the party with preventing the occasion from becoming a lightning rod for protests or an opportunity to draw unfavourable comparisons with the current leadership.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSometimes to praise the path not taken is to make a comment on the path that was taken,\u201d said Wen-Ti Sung, a fellow at the Atlantic Council Global China Hub. \u201cFor some, Li Keqiang represented a relatively more laissez-faire attitude towards state-society relations, and he stood for allowing more space for societal and market forces.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Xi faced a similar situation in November when former president Jiang Zemin, who presided over a period of high growth and relative economic openness, died aged 96.<\/p>\n<p>Jiang\u2019s death coincided with the outbreak of \u201cwhite paper protests\u201d in major cities across the country against Xi\u2019s stringent zero-Covid lockdowns, where demonstrators held up pieces of blank paper in an allusion to censorship and intolerance of criticism of the pandemic controls. Soon thereafter, Xi abandoned the policy.<\/p>\n<p>At Li\u2019s former residence in Hefei, an elderly woman angrily claimed that the provincial and city governments should be doing more to honour the senior leader\u2019s passing.\u00a0Beijing has yet to announce plans for Li\u2019s state funeral, while after Jiang died, the party established a mourning committee chaired by Xi and held a grand memorial service at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Bystanders were reluctant to discuss the current government. \u201cWe can\u2019t say much because of the overall situation here. All we can say is, people love Premier Li,\u201d the elderly woman said.<\/p>\n<p>At Jiuzi village, an hour and a half from Hefei and the site of Li\u2019s ancestral home, hundreds of people added bouquets to a sea of flowers in front of a simple, thatched-roof farmhouse. Many had driven from distant provinces to honour an official they described as the \u201cpeople\u2019s premier\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>One bouquet, donated by a construction company near Hefei, quoted a line that Li used early last year during the coronavirus pandemic to try to reassure investors that China would not close its doors to the outside world.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe Yangtze River and Yellow River will not flow in reverse,\u201d it said. \u201cChina\u2019s open door will definitely not be closed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u2009The card concluded: \u201cGood premier of the people, rest in peace.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Read the full article <a href=\"https:\/\/www.ft.com\/content\/fb38c49e-620f-440a-abde-77146391f773\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">here<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for free Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter. Hundreds of&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-7398","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-business"},"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>\u2018Other leaders are corrupt\u2019: Li Keqiang mourning poses challenge for Beijing | ZoomInFinancial<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Unlock the Editor\u2019s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Hundreds of mourners have\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/zoominfinancial.com\/?p=7398\" \/>\n<meta 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