Hundreds of people gathered near a state funeral home in China on Thursday as former premier Li Keqiang was being laid to rest.
Plainclothes and uniformed police lined the roadway leading to the funeral home, blocking traffic and telling people to move along while watching for the presence of unofficial or foreign media.
Public tributes to Li have been strictly controlled as the government seeks to prevent a mass outpouring of grief that it regards as a possible trigger for social unrest.
But despite censorship targeting “overly effusive” comments and gatherings, in Li’s home city of Hefei, in Anhui province, hundreds of mourners laid flowers for one of their most significant sons over the weekend.
The deaths of former premier Zhou Enlai in 1976, and of Hu Yaobang, a former CCP general secretary, in 1989, prompted widespread outpourings of grief that morphed into protests.
More recently, the death of Covid whistleblower Li Wenliang in 2020, and a deadly apartment fire in Xinjiang in 2022, have triggered expressions of public grief – with the latter becoming the “white paper” protests that spread across several cities.
In Li’s honour, flags at Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing were lowered to half mast, as well as at government and party offices around China and embassies and consulates abroad.
“In memory of comrade Li Keqiang, flags were flown at half-mast at Tiananmen Square in the capital,” CCTV said in a report accompanied by a photo of the flag being lowered in front of the monumental gate against the backdrop of a foggy grey morning.
Li died last Friday of a heart attack at age 68. State media had said he would be cremated on Thursday but did not mention funeral plans. According to precedent, retired high-level officials usually lie in state briefly as top leaders pass the body and offer wreaths of white flowers, the traditional colour of mourning.
Li helped guide China’s economy for a decade before being dropped from the Communist party’s all-powerful politburo standing committee in October 2022. He left office in March 2023 despite being two years below the informal retirement age of 70.
Though his time in office was marked by numerous crises, including the Covid-19 pandemic, he was seen as an alternative to the increasingly authoritarian party leader Xi Jinping. When Li became premier, the second most powerful position in China’s leadership, in 2013, he carried hopes of embracing private enterprise and allowing the free market to flourish.
But Li was left with little authority after Xi made himself the most powerful Chinese leader in decades and tightened control over the economy and society.
Xi awarded himself a third five-year term as party leader and filled the top party ranks with loyalists. The role of premier was given to Li Qiang, the party secretary for Shanghai, who lacked Li Keqiang’s national level experience and later told reporters that his job was to do whatever Xi decided.
– With the Associated Press
Emily Foster is a globe-trotting journalist based in the UK. Her articles offer readers a global perspective on international events, exploring complex geopolitical issues and providing a nuanced view of the world’s most pressing challenges.
