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China’s former premier Li Keqiang has passed away unexpectedly, causing a national outpouring of sorrow and loss. However, many also seem to see it as a unique opportunity to express long-suppressed resentment towards top leader Xi Jinping and the course he has steered the nation.
Li, who was Xi’s nominal deputy for ten years until March of this year, passed away in Shanghai on Friday from an unexpected heart attack, according to official media. He was sixty-eight.
The Chinese people were stunned to learn of his death a few months after he had retired. The nation’s strictly regulated internet has been inundated with tributes, and a sea of yellow and white bouquets placed in improvised memorials outside his childhood home and other locations linked to his past has appeared.
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Several people honoured Li for his unfulfilled dreams rather than his accomplishments in policy, writing handwritten remarks and sharing them on social media in between the flower arrangements.
Xi, the most powerful leader in China for the past twenty years, was widely perceived as sidelining Li, who was regarded as one of the weakest premiers in the history of Communist China. Instead, a lot of those in mourning have concentrated on Li’s unrealized dreams, which they believe could have guided China in a very different direction than the one it has been travelling down for the past ten years.
“People use this opportunity to express disaffection with Xi Jinping,” said Alfred Wu, associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore. “It’s a kind of anger – anger toward the current regime.”
Li, an intelligent, pragmatic reformer, was once considered a strong candidate for China’s premier position. However, he became the premier, a position often associated with economic leadership.
Li saw his policymaking power steadily eclipsed by Xi, who has centralised control and moved away from the ruling Communist Party’s collaborative leadership of more recent decades. Normally, such position comes with enormous influence in the second-largest economy in the world.
Many of the mourners recalled Li’s compassionate and down-to-earth manner. They released recordings showing his impromptu exchanges with youth during his frequent walkabouts, which tended to stand in sharp contrast to Xi’s frequently stiff public persona.
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