A man reads a newspaper with an obituary of late former Chinese Premier Li Keqiang on a bulletin board in Beijing, China October 28, 2023.
| Photo Credit: Reuters

China will cremate the remains of former Premier Li Keqiang on Thursday, when flags will fly at half mast across the country in mourning for an “outstanding” leader, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Li, a former economist and pro-reform leader who served as the premier for 10 years before retiring in March, died of a heart attack on Friday.

His remains were transferred to Beijing from Shanghai aboard a special flight on that day, Xinhua reported.

“He was extolled as an excellent CPC member, a time-tested and loyal communist soldier and an outstanding proletarian revolutionist, statesman and leader of the Party and the state,” Xinhua said on Tuesday, referring to the Chinese Communist Party.

On the day of the cremation, national flags will fly at half-mast to mourn Li at the capital’s Tiananmen Square, the Great Hall of the People, the foreign ministry as well as seats of local governments across the country, and diplomatic missions, Xinhua said.

Li’s death was a huge loss to the Communist Party and the nation, according to an official obituary posted by Xinhua last week.

But Li, once viewed as a Communist Party leadership contender, was sidelined in recent years, analysts and diplomats said, as President Xi Jinping tightened his grip on economic policymaking.

Then China’s Premier Li Keqiang speaks during the ASEAN-China Summit in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, Friday, Nov. 11, 2022. File photo
| Photo Credit: AP

China’s former Premier Li Keqiang died of a heart attack on Friday, October 27, 2023 aged 68, just 10 months after retiring from a decade of office during which his star had dimmed.

Once viewed as a top Communist Party leadership contender, Li was sidelined in recent years by President Xi Jinping, who tightened his grip on power and steered the world’s second-largest economy in a more statist direction.

The elite Peking University-educated economist was seen as a supporter of a more liberal market economy but had to bend to Xi’s preference for more state control.

“Comrade Li Keqiang, while resting in Shanghai in recent days, experienced a sudden heart attack on Oct. 26 and after all-out efforts to revive him failed, died in Shanghai at ten minutes past midnight on Oct. 27,” state broadcaster CCTV reported. An obituary will be published later, it said.

Li was premier and head of China’s cabinet under Xi for a decade until stepping down in March.

“No matter how the international winds and clouds change, China will unswervingly expand its opening up.” Li said at his last public appearance in a press conference in March. “The Yangtze River and the Yellow River will not flow backwards.”

He was born in Anhui province in eastern China, a poor farming area where his father was an official and where he was sent to toil in the fields during the Cultural Revolution.

He memorably said in 2020 that 600 million people in China earned less than the equivalent of $140 per month, sparking a wider debate on poverty and income inequality.