BEIJING – China’s former premier Li Keqiang died of a heart attack on Friday, less than a year after retiring from a decade in office, during which his reformist star had dimmed. He was 68.

Once viewed as a top Communist Party leadership contender, Mr Li was sidelined in recent years by President Xi Jinping, who tightened his grip on power and steered the world’s second-largest economy in a more statist direction.

The elite economist supported a more open market economy, advocating supply-side reforms in an approach dubbed “Likonomics”, which was never fully implemented. Ultimately, he had to bend to Mr Xi’s preference for more state control and his former power base waned in influence as Mr Xi installed his own acolytes in powerful positions.

“Comrade Li Keqiang, while resting in Shanghai in recent days, experienced a sudden heart attack on Oct 26 and after all-out efforts to revive him failed, died in Shanghai at 10 minutes past midnight on Oct 27,” state broadcaster CCTV reported.

An official obituary published by state media Xinhua on Friday called his death a “huge loss to the party and nation”, describing him as an “outstanding leader”.

“We must turn our grief into strength, learn from his revolutionary spirit, noble character and fine style,” Xinhua said.

The obituary listed his policy achievements and said four times that Mr Li carried out his work under Mr Xi’s “strong leadership”.

The South Korean government said in a statement that it “highly values the contribution former premier Li Keqiang has made on developing South Korea-China relations as a close friend of South Korea”.

Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno, in offering his condolences, noted Mr Li’s contribution to Sino-Japanese relations, including his official visit to Japan during the trilateral summit between Japan, China and South Korea in May 2018.

Chinese social media saw an outpouring of grief and shock, with some government websites turning black and white in an official sign of mourning. The Weibo microblogging platform turned its “like” button into a “mourn” icon in the shape of a chrysanthemum flower.

Laying a wreath in August 2022 at a statue of Deng Xiaoping – the leader who brought transformational reform to China’s economy – Mr Li vowed: “Reform and opening up will not stop. The Yangtze and Yellow River will not reverse course.”

Video clips of the speech, which went viral but were later censored from Chinese social media, were widely viewed as a coded criticism of Mr Xi’s policies.

“Li has been seen as the representative of the reformists,” said Ms Yun Sun, director at the Stimson Centre in Washington. “But during his 10 years as the premier, China saw the regression of many policies.”

Mr Li sparked debate on poverty and income inequality in 2020, saying 600 million people in China earned less than the equivalent of US$140 (S$192) per month.

Some Chinese intellectuals and members of the liberal elite expressed shock and dismay on the semi-private WeChat channel over the death of a beacon of China’s liberal economic reform, with some saying it signalled the end of an era.

“Li will probably be remembered as an advocate for the freer market and for the have-nots,” said Dr Wen-Ti Sung, a political scientist at the Australian National University. “But most of all, he will be remembered for what could have been.”

Dr Alfred Wu, associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore, said: “All these types of people no longer exist any more in Chinese politics.”

Mr Li was less influential than his immediate predecessors as premier – Mr Zhu Rongji and Mr Wen Jiabao – Dr Wu said. “He was sidelined but what more could he have done? It was very hard for him, with the constraints he faced under Xi.”

Mr Adam Ni, an independent China political analyst and author, described Mr Li as “a premier who stood powerless as China took a sharp turn away from reform and opening”.

Some social media users mentioned a song called Sorry It Wasn’t You, a veiled reference to Mr Xi. The song went viral some time around the death of former president Jiang Zemin in November last year before being censored.

Mr Neil Thomas, fellow for Chinese politics at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Centre for China Analysis, said: “Xi will likely respect party tradition and lead public mourning for Li, as he has no reason to anger Li’s colleagues and supporters in the party, whose waning political influence is further weakened by his death.”

Mr Li was born in Anhui province in eastern China, a poor farming area where his father was an official and where he was sent to toil in the fields during the Cultural Revolution.

While studying law at the prestigious Peking University, Mr Li befriended ardent pro-democracy advocates, some of whom became outright challengers to party control.

The confident English speaker was immersed in the intellectual and political ferment of the decade of reforms under Mr Deng, then paramount leader. That period ended in the 1989 pro-democracy Tiananmen Square protests that the military crushed.

After graduation, Mr Li joined the Communist Party’s Youth League, then a reformist-tinged ladder to higher office. He rose in the Youth League while completing a master’s degree in law and then an economics doctorate under Professor Li Yining, a well-known advocate of market reforms.

His political experience as a provincial leader in Henan, a poor and restless rural belt of central China, was marred by accusations of cracking down after an Aids scandal. He also served as party chief of Liaoning, a rust belt province striving to attract investment and reinvent itself as a modern industrial heartland.

Mr Li’s patron was Mr Hu Jintao, a former president from a political faction loosely based around the Youth League.

After Mr Xi took over as party chief in 2012, he took steps to break up the Youth League faction.

Mr Li is survived by his wife, Dr Cheng Hong, an English professor at the Capital University of Economics and Business, and their daughter. REUTERS