Former Chinese Premier Li Keqiang passed away Friday at the age of 68, Chinese state broadcaster Xinhua reported.
He died in Shanghai due to a heart attack despite medical personnel’s efforts to resuscitate him, according to Xinhua.
Li served from 2013 to March of 2023 as the country’s premier, the second-highest position in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), CNN reported. Li, known for his reformist economic views and advocacy for an open market, had been sidelined in recent years by Chinese President Xi Jinping, who favored a more state-controlled economic approach, according to the Associated Press. (RELATED: China’s Last Leader Hu Jintao Physically Removed From Chinese Communist Party Congress)
The death of recently sidelined (March 2023) of former PRC Premier Li Keqiang is rather convenient for Xi Jinping. Li reportedly died of a heart attack at 68 while on vacation in Shanghai. But the increasingly smaller black box of elite politics in🇨🇳spurs conspiracy theories… pic.twitter.com/8EfvRm0OAi
— Theresa Fallon (@TheresaAFallon) October 27, 2023
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken expressed his condolences through State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller, the AP reported.
“I extend our condolences to the family of former Premier Li Keqiang, the government of the People’s Republic of China, and the Chinese people, on his passing,” U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns wrote in a tweet.
Li’s political journey was shaped during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, an era marked by openness to liberal Western ideas. A graduate of Peking University, Li pursued law and economics, the AP reported.