China's Premier: Hakka Li Peng

["Dixie" <Dixie@singnet.com.sg>]

Li Peng,

Wade-Giles romanization LI P'ENG (b. October 1928, Ch'eng-tu, Szechwan
province, China), prime minister of the People's Republic of China from
1988. 

The son of writer Li Shuo-hs|n (Li Shouxun), who was executed by the
Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) in 1930, Li Peng from 1939 was cared for by
Deng Yingchao, the wife of Zhou Enlai. In 1948 Li was sent to Moscow, where
he studied at the Moscow Power Institute. He returned to China in 1955.
>From 1955 to 1979 he supervised a number of major power projects in China,
and between 1979 and 1982 he served as vice minister and minister of power
industry and first vice minister of water resources and electric power. He
also rose through the ranks of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), joining
the Central Committee in 1982 and becoming an elected member of the
Political Bureau (Politburo) and the Secretariat of the CCP 12th Central
Committee in 1985. Earlier that year he had been named minister of the
State Education Commission. In 1987 Li became a member of the powerful
standing committee of the Politburo. In April 1988 he was chosen by Deng
Xiaoping to succeed Zhao Ziyang as prime minister after the latter had
assumed the post of general secretary of the CCP. 

Li advocated a cautious approach to economic liberalization, and his chief
concern was the maintenance of economic and political stability under the
direction of the central government. When massive student protests calling
for more democratic government broke out in Peking in April 1989, Li was
foremost among those advocating the demonstrators' suppression by force if
necessary. He won Deng Xiaoping's support for his stance, and on May 20 he
declared martial law in Peking. In early June Li sent the armed forces into
central Peking to crush the pro-democracy movement, with the consequent
loss of hundreds of lives.