CHINA: REFORMERS’ HOPES

LI KEQIANG, CHINA’S NEXT PREMIER, CARRIES REFORMERS’ HOPES

Keith B. Richburg

The Washington Post, November 10, 2012

BEIJING — Li Keqiang, the man slated to become China’s next premier, is described by several former classmates and associates as a cautious political climber who moved up slowly through the Communist Party’s bureaucracy while quietly maintaining friendships with pro-democracy advocates.

Li’s ties to known reformers have given some people here hope that once installed in the Chinese government’s No. 2 position — a promotion that is expected to be formalized at the conclusion of the party congress next week — he might become an inside advocate for changing the country’s autocratic, Leninist system.

But friends and former associates also said that Li was always reticent when speaking, rarely revealing much about his personal views — leaving them to only guess that he shares the reform agenda. “He’s the kind of person whose mind you can’t really read,” said Dai Qing, a democracy activist who was jailed for nearly a year after the 1989 student protests.

China’s outgoing premier, Wen Jiabao, also was seen by many here as a reformer who in recent years began publicly advocating for more accountability and less corruption in China’s Communist-run government. But without allies, Wen became an increasingly isolated voice for reform, unable — or unwilling — to push through his agenda. Some of Li’s friends and associates now wonder if he will suffer the same fate.

Li is described as an extremely intelligent self-taught speaker of English and a loyal Communist Party member who gave up a rare opportunity to study abroad when the party asked him to stay in China to work organizing students at Peking University as a top official in the Communist Youth League. It was at the university that Li made friendships with many outspoken pro-democracy advocates, some of whom were jailed or went into exile after the 1989 military crackdown at Tiananmen Square.

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