Why Chinese mourn Li Keqiang, their former prime minister

The umbrellas gave them away. Even from a distance, these were unmistakably townsfolk, shielding themselves with parasols from an autumn sun that no Chinese farmer would fear. On and on they trudged: a long column of outsiders, following a country lane between rice paddies and fishponds towards the village of Jiuzi, ancestral home of Li Keqiang, China’s prime minister until his retirement earlier this year.

They were mourners, turning out in their hundreds on this warm Sunday, a few days after Li’s sudden death at the age of 68. Most held bunches of white and yellow chrysanthemums, a funeral flower in China. Under their umbrellas some were formally dressed in black and white. Parents cajoled young children to keep walking, after parking cars in fields well outside the village.

No Communist Party diktat had summoned these grieving citizens. Nor had convoys of buses brought them. Quite the opposite. Official media outlets have played down Li’s death. Instead, state media have devoted their efforts—as always—to extolling Xi Jinping. China’s leader has spent more than a decade concentrating power in his own hands, at the expense of government ministries and of Li Keqiang, who oversaw them as prime minister. The diminishing of Li continues even after his demise. Though terse, his official obituary finds room for four tributes to the leadership of the party central committee “with Xi Jinping at the core”.

For days, censors have deleted large numbers of online tributes to Li, leaving only the blandest untouched. Reports abound of universities banning students from organising memorials. There is a grim logic to this caution. More than once, a public figure’s passing has offered Chinese citizens a chance to stage demonstrations, notably after a former party boss, Hu Yaobang, died in 1989.

For all that discouragement, thousands of Chinese have persisted in leaving flowers and handwritten notes for Li, from Jiuzi to cities where he lived and worked, such as Hefei and Zhengzhou. Some observers, including Chinese intellectuals outside the country, detect in these tributes a challenge to Mr Xi, and a yearning for a more reformist China. One exiled writer calls this moment a “flowers revolution”. Such intellectuals remember Li’s youth as a brilliant law student at Peking University, with an interest in Western legal systems (he helped to translate a book on the rule of law by Lord Denning, a British judge). They are undaunted by Li’s actual record as prime minister from 2013 to 2023. True, they concede, that decade saw the party systematically dismantle checks and balances on its power, and spurn the rule of law in favour of an iron-fisted alternative that Mr Xi calls “law-based governance”. But in their telling, Li’s humiliations make him an icon for others whose hopes have been crushed in Xi-era China.

Chaguan is not about to tell Chinese exiles they are mistaken about their own country. Indeed, despite the censors’ best efforts, social-media users have circulated images of floral tributes and graffiti that do look like anti-Xi complaints. Many of these quote celebrated Li sayings, in particular his pledge that China’s opening to the world is as irreversible as the flow of the Yangzi and Yellow rivers. It is safe to assume the intention is to grumble about the inward-looking nationalism of the Xi era.

For all that, it would be unfair to claim that every mourner for Li is a protester. When this columnist visited Jiuzi, the crowds were on their best behaviour, not defiant or fearful, as would be expected at an actual demonstration in China. Local farmers sold cut-up sugar cane to visitors, as police directed traffic. When asked why they had come, several mourners offered apolitical answers about a local man who reached the top.

A mother who had brought her young son to lay flowers praised Li as “a good premier who did practical things for the people”. Yet listen carefully, and some of that cautious praise was revealing. The mother noted that Li went to the epicentre of the covid-19 pandemic, Wuhan, “at the earliest possible time”. She did not mention that Mr Xi took months to visit Wuhan and never visits natural disasters while they are under way. Perhaps the mother was not thinking of this. But it is a common gripe.

Several people in Jiuzi noted that Li, the son of a rural official, knew poverty as a child. To them, this explained Li’s focus on concrete problems, such as migrant workers not being paid wages they are owed. One man contrasted Li’s humble origins with Mr Xi’s background, as the son of a party elder and Politburo member.

Around China, sites linked to Mr Xi and his family have been lavishly restored as “red tourism” destinations for party pilgrims. In Jiuzi, a farmer recalled talk of beautifying the village after Li achieved high office. But whenever their illustrious ex-neighbour heard of special treatment for Jiuzi, he “would call and tell the local officials not to do it,” the farmer said approvingly.

The death of accountability

Two seemingly disparate groups—angry dissenters and nominally apolitical families laying flowers in Jiuzi—do in fact overlap. The link involves accountability and Li’s willingness to admit that China still has serious problems. At a press conference in 2020, Li shocked some urbanites by reminding them that around 600m Chinese subsist on just 1,000 yuan ($137) a month. He also admitted that covid had hit poor families hard. At other times he called for checks on arbitrary government power and for the public to supervise officials’ work. Many Chinese recall those Li sayings now. They are making a political point whether they admit it or not.

As a reform-era technocrat, Li served a one-party system that sought legitimacy through governing performance. Many Chinese miss that time. That is surely what they mean when they call Li practical and in touch with the masses. Today China has one-man rule and the party rejects external supervision. To admit to problems in this China is to doubt Mr Xi: an impossibility. China will be mourning that loss of accountability for a long time to come. ■

Read more from Chaguan, our columnist on China:
How China sees Gaza (Oct 26th)
Xi Jinping wants to be loved by the global south (Oct 19th)
China’s ties with America are warming, a bit (Oct 12th)

Also: How the Chaguan column got its name