LI PENG

born October 1928, Ch'eng-tu, Szechwan province, China Wade-Giles romanization Li P'eng premier of China from 1988 to 1998. The son of writer Li Shuo-hsn (Li Shouxun), who was executed by the Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) in 1930, Li Peng from 1939 was cared for by Deng Yingchao, the wife of Zhou Enlai. In 1948 Li was sent to Moscow, where he studied at the Moscow Power Institute. He returned to China in 1955. From 1955 to 1979 he supervised a number of major electrical power projects in China, and between 1979 and 1982 he served as vice minister and minister of power industry and first vice minister of water resources and electric power. He also rose through the ranks of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), joining the Central Committee in 1982 and becoming an elected member of the Political Bureau (Politburo) and the Secretariat of the CCP 12th Central Committee in 1985. In 1987 Li became a member of the powerful standing committee of the Political Bureau. In April 1988 he was chosen by Deng Xiaoping to succeed Zhao Ziyang as premier after the latter had assumed the post of general secretary of the CCP. Li advocated a cautious approach to economic liberalization, and his chief concern was the maintenance of economic and political stability under the direction of the central government. When massive student protests calling for more democratic government broke out at Tiananmen Square in Peking in April 1989, Li was foremost among those advocating the demonstrators' suppression by force if necessary. He won Deng Xiaoping's support for his stance, and on May 20 he declared martial law in Peking. In early June Li sent the armed forces into central Peking to crush the pro-democracy movement, with the consequent loss of hundreds of lives. As premier, Li oversaw the functioning of the central government and carried out the policies of Deng Xiaoping, China's paramount leader, and Jiang Zemin, the general secretary of the CCP. Li was reappointed to a second five-year term as premier in 1993. During his long premiership the Chinese economy continued to grow at a rapid rate, with the GDP rising by almost 10 percent a year and living standards improving accordingly. Private enterprise steadily expanded and began to assume the dominant role in the economy, while the first steps were taken to stop subsidizing the large, inefficient state-owned enterprises that had become a drag on China's continued growth. Despite Li's success in managing the economy, he remained personally unpopular with a large segment of the Chinese people because of his part in the violent suppression of the Tiananmen demonstrations in 1989. Upon the expiration of his second term as premier (the maximum allowed under the constitution), Li in 1998 was appointed to serve as chairman of the National People's Congress, China's nominal legislature. He kept his seat on the standing committee of the Political Bureau, thereby remaining one of the most powerful figures in both the party and government.