Former Chinese Premier Li Peng Dies At 90

Former Chinese premier Li Peng – dubbed the "Butcher of Beijing" by critics for his role in the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown – has died aged 90.

The former chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee and premier died of illness in Beijing on Monday night, Xinhua said.

In a statement, Xinhua said Li – who was premier at the time – and the rest of the central government leadership under paramount leader Deng Xiaoping took "decisive action" to quell the student movement in 1989, which Beijing termed as a "counter-revolutionary rebellion".

Li, a native of Sichuan, was born in October 1928. He joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1945 and began moving up the party ranks in the 1950s. He became a vice premier in 1983.

When pro-democracy demonstrations in Tiananmen Square threatened the elite in 1989, he and other hardliners outmanoeuvred dovish officials, with Li afterwards frequently defending the decision to fire on the demonstrators as a "necessary" step.

"Without these measures China would have faced a situation worse than in the former Soviet Union or Eastern Europe," he said on a tour of Austria in 1994 as his international pariah status started to wear off.

Two days before the declaration of martial law, Li met with student leaders, who cut him off and rebuked him for not addressing their demands in a surreal scene broadcast live on television.

But the decision to use force had already been made.

In later years, Li tried to minimise his role in the bloodshed, presenting himself as merely executing decisions made by Deng – who died in 1997 – and other party elders, according to extracts from a diary published in 2010 and attributed to Li.

But in the "Tiananmen Papers", apparently secret Communist Party documents made public in the US in 2001, Li instead appears to be the instigator of the crackdown, striving to convince Deng to send tanks to the square.

The authenticity of these documents has never been proven, and Communist authorities block discussion of the crackdown.

Li became chairman of the NPC Standing Committee in 1998 and retired in 2002.

During his final years in power, Li pushed through approval for his pet project, the gargantuan and controversial Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River, which forced 1.3 million people to leave their homes as they were swallowed up by its enormous reservoir.

In his later years, Li rarely appeared in public, and was usually seen only at official gatherings aimed at displaying unity such as in 2007 at the 80th anniversary of the founding of the People's Liberation Army. (additional reporting from AFP, AP)

Last updated: 2019-07-23 HKT 20:05