Li Peng
(b. 1928), Chinese premier. Born in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, in October 1928, Li Peng is the orphaned son of a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) worker and was adopted by Chinese premier Zhou Enlai (1898–1976). Li was trained as a power engineer in Moscow from 1948 to 1955. After his return to China, he was the director and chief engineerat several power plants from 1956 to 1966 and later in various bureaucratic or party positions relating to power generation. In 1979, partly due to the backing of his stepmother, CCP Central Committee member Deng Yingchao (1904–1997), Li began a swift ascent up the hierarchy, first as deputy minister of power production (1981), then as a member of the Central Committee (1982) and vice-premier in charge of energy and communications (1983). In 1985, he became a member of the Standing Committee of the CCP Politburo and in 1988 became premier, a post he held until 1998.
Li Peng, on a four-day visit to Kenya in November 1999, is greeted by Kenyan President Daniel arap Moi. (AFP/CORBIS)Li achieved his greatest notoriety during the Tiananmen Square incident of 1989. Strongly opposed to the student takeover of the square, he was seen as patronizing during meetings with student leaders and was hectored at a televised meeting with hospitalized hunger strikers. He sided with other hard-liners against Zhao Ziyang (b. 1919), who was removed as party leader. Later, news media and students frequently referred to him as the "butcher of Beijing" for being the first official to publicly support the People's Liberation Army's bloody crackdown during the night of 3–4 June.
After 1989, Li cooperated with CCP leader Jiang Zemin and economics czar Zhu Rongji to rein in China's high inflation and begin sweeping reforms of state-owned enterprises. Elected chair of the National People's Congress despite an unprecedented two hundred negative votes in 1998, Li remains an influential voice in policy making.
Further Reading
Lam, Willy Wo-Lap. (1999) The Era of Jiang Zemin. New York: Prentice-Hall.
Salisbury, Harrison E. (1992) The New Emperors: China in the Era of Mao and Deng. Boston: Little, Brown & Co.
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