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Li Peng

Li Peng earned the nickname "Butcher of Beijing" for orchestrating the brutal breakup of mass demonstrations in the capital in the early hours of June 4, 1989. He died 23 July 2019 of an unspecified illness after failing to respond to medical treatment. The ex-premier had previously battled bladder cancer. Li served as the member of the 12th Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, secretary of the CPC Secretariat, a member of the 13th, 14th and 15th Political Bureau, premier and chairman of the Standing Committee of the Ninth National People's Congress.

An official statement said Li was an excellent member of the Communist Party of China, a time-tested and loyal Communist soldier, a prominent proletarian revolutionary and statesman, as well as an outstanding leader of the Party and the country. Li was an outstanding leader in the energy sector and an important founder of nuclear power development in China, the statement noted.

Li gained notoriety worldwide as one of the key architects of the brutal breakup of mass pro-democracy demonstrations in the capital. Along with then-paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, Li was seen as an unapologetic hard-liner responsible for ordering the assault that crushed weeks of demonstrations by protesters in central Beijing. He stayed at the top of the Communist regime for more than a decade, while remaining a hated symbol of the repression until his death.

Li spent his childhood in the shadow of Zhou Enlai, China's premier for nearly three decades and possibly the Communist Party's most skilled politician. Born in 1928 in Chengdu, Southwest China's Sichuan Province, Li came from a revolutionary family and dedicated himself as a revolutionary at an early age. Li was adopted at the age of three by Zhou after his Communist father became a "martyr of the Revolution," killed by the Kuomintang in 1931. In March 1941, he went to Yan'an - a former revolutionary base - to participate in revolutionary work and joined the Party in 1945. During the War of Liberation (1945-1949), he was called by the Party to the front line and served as a technician of an electric company, a worker in an oil factory and the secretary of the Party branch.

In September 1948, he was arranged by the Party for seven years of hydropower engineering study study in the Soviet Union, and after coming back in 1955, he volunteered to work in lower-level departments where he served as director and chief engineer of power plants.

His high-level family contacts allowed him to escape the political turmoil of the Cultural Revolution. He underwent an impact during the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) but always adhered to the principle of Party spirit, seeking truth from facts. Since April 1979, he served as Party chief of the North China Electric Power Administration, minister and Party chief of the Ministry of Power Industry and creatively implemented the strategy of "power is priority." He rose quickly through the Energy Ministry. He had proposed the advanced development of the country's electric power system and pushed for significant progress in China's power station construction, electricity production and power grid management.

He assumed the post of vice-premier in 1983. In 1985, he was elected a member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and a member of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee at the Fifth Plenary Session of the 12th CPC Central Committee. He was in charge of work in such areas as energy, transportation and key construction projects. Li also participated in the discussion of policies regarding energy and transportation in the 7th Five-Year Plan (1986-1990) and pushed forward the establishment of a synthetic and unified transportation system.

Li was appointed as premier in 1988 at a meeting of the National People's Congress, the top legislature. He had thoroughly implemented the policy of rectification and deepening reform, explored new methods of macro-control over the national economy and therefore helped lead the economy into a new era of development. A conservative economic planner thought to retain faith in the old Soviet-style of central planning, he was a key player in the Three Gorges Dam project on the Yangtze river –– the world's largest in capacity. He resolutely implemented the policy of deepening reforms, exploring new methods for macroeconomic regulation and control of the national economy, which helped push China's economy out of the predicament and enter a new period of development.

When pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square threatened the elite in 1989, he and other hardliners outmanuvered dovish officials. During the political turbulence in 1989, Li took a clear-cut stand and adopted resolute measures to end the unrest and resume domestic stability, the official statement at the time of his death said. He played an important role in the political battle that concerned the fate of the Party and the country, the statement said. " Together with most of the comrades of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee, Li took decisive measures to stop the unrest and quell the counter-revolutionary riots, and stabilized the domestic situation and played an important role in this major struggle concerning the future of the Party and the country."

Two days before the declaration of martial law, Li met with student leaders, who cut him off and rebuked him for not addressing their demands in a surreal scene broadcast live on TV. But the decision to use force had already been made. After vast crowds of students, workers and others had been encamped for weeks in Tiananmen Square to demand change, Li proclaimed martial law on May 20, 1989. Two weeks later, on the nights of June 3-4, the military put a bloody end to the protests, killing hundreds of unarmed civilians –– by some estimates more than 1,000.

Though the decision to send in the troops was a collective one, Li was widely held responsible for the bloody crackdown. Its taint trailed him through to the end of his official political career in 2003, with his trips abroad generating widespread protests –– such as in Paris in 1996, where more than 2,000 took to the streets to decry his welcome by president Jacques Chirac.

He was reappointed as premier in 1993 and actively supported, promoted and implemented the reform and opening-up policy. He remained a member of the elite Politburo Standing Committee for 15 years and for most of the 1990s ranked number two behind then Chinese president Jiang Zemin. He held the premiership for 11 years until 1998. Under the leadership of the CPC Central Committee, Li was in charge of formulating the 9th Five-Year Plan (1996-2000) and arranging the construction of a series of major national projects, thus promoting the sustainable, rapid and sound development of the national economy.

In 1998, he was elected as chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee. He retired from the post in 2003. Li played important roles in scientific and democratic decision-making as well as the construction of the Three Gorges Dam-a massive flood-control and hydropower project on the Yangtze River. Working in the central government, Li was devoted to the fields of science and technology, education, environmental protection, diplomacy and the national defense industry. He organized and participated in a large number of fruitful bilateral and multilateral diplomatic activities, making important contributions to the creation of a new all-round diplomatic structure. He also implemented the "one country, two systems" policy and led the work of returning Hong Kong and Macao to the motherland.

He also played an important role in the scientific and democratic decision-making and construction of the Three Gorges Project and actively supported the development of China's manned spaceflight.

Li afterwards frequently defending the decision to fire on the demonstrators as a "necessary" step. "Without these measures, China would have faced a situation worse than in the former Soviet Union or Eastern Europe," he said on a tour of Austria in 1994 as his international pariah status started to wear off.

In later years, Li tried to minimise his role in the bloodshed, presenting himself as merely executing decisions made by Deng –– who died in 1997 –– and other party elders, according to extracts from a diary published in 2010 and attributed to Li. But in the "Tiananmen Papers," apparently secret Communist Party documents made public in the US in 2001, Li instead appears to be the instigator of the crackdown, striving to convince Deng to send tanks to the square. The authenticity of these documents has never been proven, and Communist authorities block discussion of the crackdown.

A father of three, Li saw his family's reputation tarnished in the early 2000s by his son Li Xiaopeng, then president of Huaneng Power International, who was suspected of having enriched himself by buying shares in the firm. His daughter Li Xiaolin –– who reportedly resigned as vice-president of one of China's state-owned power monopolies in 2018 –– is known for her ostentatiously luxurious taste in dress and was revealed by the Panama Papers to be the sole shareholder in several offshore companies, through which she discreetly controlled firms within China.

Corruption is an enduring issue in China and was high among the Tiananmen protesters' complaints. "None of my three children is engaged in official profiteering," Li told demonstrators during their televised meeting, according to a transcript posted online. They were older than the protesters, he added, "We look at you as if you were our own children, our own flesh and blood."

Li firmly supported the Party Central Committee with Comrade Hu Jintao as General Secretary, the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core, the building of a clean and honest government and the fight against corruption. Li was an important founder, loyal practitioner and active promoter of China's socialist market economy system. He appropriately handled reform, development and stability with consideration of China's conditions, the official statement said. He also placed high priority on poverty relief work and showed great concern for the conditions of workers laid off from State-owned enterprises. The statement said that Li firmly supported the Party's anti-corruption campaign. He served the people wholeheartedly and fought for the cause of Communism, the statement said. Li's death is a heavy loss for the Party and the country, it said.