Maura Elizabeth Cunningham

Former Chinese Premier Li Keqiang suffered a fatal heart attack late on Thursday night, passing away at the age of 68. An economist with a reputation for being something of a reformer (relatively speaking, for a senior Chinese Communist Party official), Li spent his decade as premier getting increasingly sidelined by Xi Jinping. As Xi centralized power and increased the prominence of Party-state organs, the kind of market-based economic reform that Li preferred fell out of favor and his role became more and more limited. Finally, Xi sent Li into retirement and replaced him with Li Qiang earlier this year.

Though he was no longer in government, Li Keqiang’s sudden death sparked a round of What Does This Mean from the overseas China-watcher and journalist corps. Hu Yaobang immediately got name-checked; after being forced from office in 1987, the onetime Party Secretary died (also of a sudden heart attack) in April 1989, and public expressions of mourning soon snowballed into the Tiananmen Square protests. Though the possibility that we’ll ever see a repeat of 1989 is slim, multiple generations of China analysts continue to evaluate events in the country through that lens. The possibility of protest is never far from the minds of CCP officials, either: China Digital Times posted censorship guidelines that warned government bodies to “Pay particular attention to overly effusive comments and assessments” of Li that could serve as indirect criticisms of Xi Jinping and his Party-state.

There were, however, some expressions of grief for Li mixed with subtle critiques of Xi. In Li’s hometown of Hefei, citizens lined up to place flowers at an unofficial memorial in the neighborhood where he lived as a teenager. Despite censorship controls, New York Times journalist Li Yuan reported, numerous online commentators “praised Mr. Li more for what he stood for and said than for what he was able to accomplish under Mr. Xi.”

Using Li Keqiang’s death to express dissatisfaction with the present highlights more widespread problems in today’s PRC. Last week’s issue of the New Yorker featured a long article by Evan Osnos on “China’s Age of Malaise.” No single magazine piece—nor any single book—can cover the entirety of a country’s experience, and some readers have criticized Osnos for talking with a limited number of interview subjects, arguing that he presents only the most pessimistic version of China today. Without having been in China over the past few years, I can’t speak to the truth of that. I do, however, think that the broader point still holds: that after several decades of economic growth and improving prospects for large portions of China’s population, a general stagnation has set in—one that does not cast favorable light on Xi Jinping’s leadership. I don’t find it likely that Li Keqiang’s death will spark loud, or widespread, criticisms of Xi and his CCP. But Li’s passing represents the loss of another voice and another path that Xi has soundly forsaken.

Reading Round-Up: The Death of Li Keqiang

James T. Areddy and Chun Han Wong, “Li Keqiang, Former China Premier Sidelined by Xi Jinping, Dies at 68”
Ian Johnson, “The Passing of a Premier and China’s Future”
Evan Osnos, “China’s Age of Malaise”
James Palmer, “Li Keqiang Lived and Died in Xi Jinping’s Shadow”
Katie Stallard, “‘A pity it wasn’t you’: what Li Keqiang’s death means for Xi Jinping”
Shunsuke Tabeta, “Li Keqiang makeshift memorial draws long lines of people”
Samuel Wade, “Minitrue: Beware of ‘Overly Effusive Comments’ on Late Premier Li Keqiang”
Jeremy Wallace, “RIP to Li Keqiang”
Kevin Yao, “China’s ex-premier leaves an unfinished reform legacy”
Li Yuan, “Chinese Mourn the Death of a Premier, and the Loss of Economic Hope”

Recommendations

China Stories

Every day, I am inundated with news about Hong Kong’s national security law — but I never imagined becoming ensnared in its grasp. That changed when the police arrived at our front door and told my father they would search our apartment without a warrant. Until then, I had naively believed that their focus was on politicians and protesters, never nerds like me. The police’s concern was stranger than fiction: They had taken umbrage at 11 essays submitted to a Cantonese writing competition that I had organized in 2020.

Andrew Lok Hang Chan, “Hong Kong authorities don’t want you to read this story. Here’s why.”

Chris Buckley, “China Dismisses Defense Minister Amid Swirl of Speculation”
Jonathan Chatwin, “A Contested Century”
ChinaFile Conversations, “Are Staying in the U.S. or Returning to China Mutually Exclusive?” and “What Is the Future for International Students in China?”
William Han, “Island Elegy: Coming to terms with Taiwan’s potential demise”
Ian Johnson, “The Books I Helped Rescue From China’s Repression”

If Karl Marx and the ancient sage Confucius were to sit down in twenty-first-century China and shoot the breeze with pink-cheeked students and history professors — hey, what would that be like? Would Confucius be intrigued by the eternal science of Marxism? Would Marx vibe with socialism with Chinese characteristics?

Dylan Levi King, “Karl Marx Meets Confucius on Hunan TV”

David Rennie, “How China Sees Gaza”
Sha Qingqing, “Can China Rediscover Its Love of Baseball?”
Lingling Wei, “Xi Jinping Is Looking for Someone to Blame for China’s Property Bust”

Wanderings Around the World
E. Tammy Kim, “How the Yale Unions Took Over New Haven”
Nicholas Mainieri, “Ring Lardner’s Mysteries of the Central League”
Dennis McAuliffe Jr., “What ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ taught my Oklahoma town”

Standout Story
Teo Armus and Hadley Green, “Charlottesville’s Lee statue meets its end, in a 2,250-degree furnace”
Erin Thompson, “The Most Controversial Statue in America Surrenders to the Furnace”
How the Monuments Came Down documentary

After years of controversy, violence, and court battles, a statue of Robert E. Lee that once stood in the heart of Charlottesville, Virginia was recently melted down. The bronze ingots created by this process will be turned into a new piece of public art, in a process led by the Swords into Plowshares project. At the Washington Post, Teo Armus and Hadley Green report on the events that culminated in the statue’s secretive final moments. As historian Erin Thompson, who also witnessed the statue’s dramatic end, writes in a guest essay at the New York Times,

Confederate monuments went up with rich, emotional ceremonies that created historical memory and solidified group identity. The way we remove them should be just as emotional, striking and memorable. Instead of quietly tucking statues away, we can use monuments one final time to bind ourselves together into new communities.

I’m not sure there’s a city in America right now that doesn’t have to confront the question of how to approach statues commemorating the Confederacy, white violence against Indigenous Americans, individuals who have been shown to hold discredited or hateful views, and so forth. Removing and melting down such statues, to transform them into public art that can spark productive conversations, is an approach that I strongly endorse. (Save a few statues for museum exhibits, I say—but really, how many do we need?)

For more on this topic, plus lots more historical context, watch the excellent documentary How the Monuments Came Down, which I saw at a screening during the American Historical Association’s annual meeting this year.

Feature Photo: Loudmouth Books, an awesome new independent bookstore in Indianapolis, Indiana, October 27, 2023.