(TibetanReview.net, Oct29’23) – China has censored all references to the suddenness of the death of its former premier Li Keqiang on Oct 27 and the offering of praises of him on social media while universities have banned mourning activities for him, reported nytimes.com Oct 27 and the scmp.com Oct 28.
Besides, the passing of former premier Li has already triggered various measures to ensure that stability is maintained because the death of a leader in China can usher in big changes, as it did after Mao Zedong, or can lead to political upheaval, like it did when grieving for Hu Yaobang morphed into the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, noted the bbc.co.uk Oct 27.
In the case of Li’s death, The Party doesn’t want mourning for a popular, liberal, former number two leader to generate wider criticism of the current administration, led by Xi Jinping, the report said.
It is not just that Li died so suddenly, suffering a heart attack just months after stepping down, but because of what he represented: a way of potentially governing China with different priorities to those of General Secretary Xi, the report added.
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Some Chinese universities have told students not to organise private commemoration activities for Li, in an apparent bid to avoid social turmoil, said the scmp.com report.
Li, China’s premier for a decade until he stepped down in March this year under the shadow of an all-powerful President Xi Jinping, died of a heart attack at the age of 68 in the early hours of Oct 27 morning in Shanghai, according to official media reports.
His sudden death shocked the nation, with many paying tribute to him online after the news emerged.
But some universities have told student counsellors and leaders not to arrange memorial activities, fearing that they could potentially turn into protests.
One student counsellor at a top university in Beijing said they had been told to work with student leaders to ensure that no memorials were held for now, the report said.
“We don’t want students to organise their own mourning events. They could get overly emotional and cause unnecessary turbulence like what happened 30-plus years ago,” one student counsellor at a top university in Beijing was quoted as saying.
He was referring to the fact that in 1989, thousands of students gathered at Tiananmen Square to mourn the death of former Communist Party chief Hu Yaobang, which led to mass pro-democracy protests and a bloody crackdown.
Likewise a lecturer at Shanghai Jiao Tong University has said its party committee had issued a notice calling on all faculties and departments to “do a good job on campus security and stability in the coming days to ensure that all aspects of public opinion remain safe and orderly.”
The lecturer, who has declined to be named, has said staff had been told to stay vigilant and put a stop to “inappropriate remarks” about Li’s death.
“Some of the student counsellors have been asked to remain on campus this weekend to keep track of student activities both on and off-campus, and to immediately report any private mourning activities to the university leadership,” he has said.
Also, at Hainan University, the Communist Youth League Committee has issued a notice to the student union calling for student leaders not to post anything on social media about the late former premier, except in the language used in official obituaries.
A notice circulating online from Guiyang Aviation Industry Technical College was stated to ban students from “commenting, publishing or disseminating any opinions about the political situation” in any social media in coming weeks. It was cited as saying students “will be handed to the authorities” if they were found to have made “any harmful speech or spread harmful content”.
“Beijing will enter into a period of tightening security. Maintaining stability will become a major theme in coming days as they don’t want any mishaps during this difficult period,” Chen Daoyin, a political commentator and former professor at the Shanghai University of Political Science and Law, has said.
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Meanwhile, on the social media platform Weibo, many posts that expressed shock over the suddenness of Li’s death were censored, said the nytimes.com report. So were comments that referred to him as “a good premier for the people” and “a great man.” The comments that were allowed mostly went along the line of “rest in peace,” the report said
For many people in China, Li’s death unleashed pent-up frustration, anger and anxiety about what they see as Mr Xi’s mishandling of the economy. Mr Xi went after the private sector, undermining some of China’s most successful companies. He alienated some of China’s biggest trading partners and got closer to countries like Russia, while replacing reform-minded leaders with loyalists.
Mr Xi turned the government’s focus more on ideology than the economy, the report said.
For them, Li, who had degrees in law and economics, represented the pragmatic technocrats who led the country out of poverty in the 1990s and 2000s. They recited his opening remarks in his first news conference in 2013 after becoming the premier. “We will be loyal to the constitution, faithful to the people, and take the people’s wishes as the direction of our governance,” Mr Li was quoted as having said at that time.
The report said people remember Li for his most famous quotes that “Power must not be arbitrary” and “It’s harder to touch interests than souls.”