Andy Wong/Associated Press
China?s new prime minister, Li Keqiang, could be seen on a huge television screen at a press event in Beijing on Thursday. More Photos ?
BEIJING ? He lost out in the competition for the top job in China, but Li Keqiang will step into the secondary role of prime minister next year bearing the hopes of some of the more reform-minded members of his generation.
Arguably China?s best-educated leader, Mr. Li speaks confident English. In contrast with the previous round of leaders who were steeped in leaden party doctrine and Soviet economic theory, Mr. Li has been exposed to a rich palette of liberal thinking. And like his predecessor Wen Jiabao, he often displays a common touch with ordinary Chinese.
But Mr. Li, 57, will be hemmed in by the stability-obsessed conservatives who dominate the seven-seat Politburo Standing Committee slated to effectively run China for the next five years. As one of only two members who owe their positions to Hu Jintao, the departing president who groomed him for power, he may find himself outgunned by those allied to Jiang Zemin, the 86-year-old former president and kingmaker.
And after rising from modest beginnings through the Communist Party political machine, he faces a panoply of ?princelings? descended from revolutionary luminaries, many of them inclined to protect state-owned businesses that have generated enormous wealth for friends and relatives.
Those who know Li Keqiang (pronounced lee ke chang) say he was profoundly shaped by his years at Peking University, a pre-eminent school with a long tradition of liberal teaching. Like other traumatized young Chinese whose best years were stolen by the madness of Mao Zedong?s Cultural Revolution, Mr. Li arrived there in 1978 with a thirst for Western ideas and a curiosity about individual rights, market economics and democracy.
At night, after the university had shut off the dorm lights, he and his classmates would gather under street lamps to debate the merits of constitutional law and the downsides of continuous class struggle. Some of his friends would later end up in jail for their role in the 1989 student protests in Tiananmen Square.
?Like all of us back then, Li Keqiang was idealistic, open-minded, incisive and eager to see China change,? said Wang Juntao, who was also among the first batch of students to return to campus through competitive exams after the decade of chaos ended with Mao?s death in 1976.
After their lost decade, the students ? whose ages ranged from late teens to early 30s ? threw themselves into their studies with zeal. ?We were so thirsty to learn that we spent all our time in the classrooms or the library,? said Tao Jingzhou, who, along with Mr. Li, was one of 81 students assigned to the school?s law department.
Despite Mr. Li?s unremarkable run at the helm of two provinces and a reputation as a deferential party loyalist, some of his former classmates hold out hope that he may help nudge China?s opaque, authoritarian system toward greater openness. Others, citing his doctorate in economics, say at the very least he could become a forceful advocate for loosening the grip of the state-run conglomerates that many analysts say are smothering entrepreneurs and endangering China?s economic miracle.
?We all have a hope that he hasn?t abandoned the beliefs of his youth,? said Chen Ziming, a political commentator who was active in the experimental student elections in 1980 that Mr. Li supported. ?Perhaps we are hoping for too much.?
Indeed, today it can be hard to spot traces of the young idealistic man who once translated ?The Due Process of Law,? the treatise by the famed British jurist Lord Denning. As many of his classmates went abroad to continue their studies or joined the ill-fated democracy movement that was crushed by the military, Mr. Li cast his lot with the Communist Party bureaucracy and later with Mr. Hu.
When the opportunity came for further study in the United States, he was persuaded by party officials to stay in China and devote himself to the Communist Youth League, the cadre training organization whose membership was largely drawn from those with humble pedigrees. Years later, when friends threw themselves into the protests that swamped Tiananmen Square, Mr. Li, in his role as league secretary, pleaded with them to return to campus, according to the memoirs of several participants.
Ian Johnson contributed reporting. Patrick Zuo, Amy Qin and Chang Lu contributed research.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/16/world/asia/li-keqiang-named-chinas-prime-minister.html
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