Death of Former Chinese Premier Li Keqiang Brings Attention to His Widow

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and his wife Cheng Hong arrive at the Bellevue presidential Palace to meet the German President and his wife in Berlin on July 9, 2018, after German-Chinese government consultations. Tobias Schwarz/AFP via Getty Images

Former Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s sudden death has brought attention to his little-known widow, Cheng Hong.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) authorities announced on Oct. 27 that her husband died suddenly of a heart attack, pushing her to attract public attention.

Ms. Cheng previously kept a very low profile and avoided public life when possible.

Rumors have spread on Chinese social media, suggesting that Ms.Cheng did not agree to her late husband’s cremation due to his sudden and unexplained death, and she allegedly demanded a thorough investigation, which gained sympathy from some CCP senior officials. The Epoch Times cannot verify such information.

Meanwhile, the CCP now strictly censors online information surrounding Mr. Li’s death, and public mourning is strictly prohibited.

‘Era of Carnage’ 

Ms. Cheng was born in 1957 to a father who held a provincial position as a party official and a mother who was a reporter for the state media Xinhua News Agency.

In 1974, Ms. Cheng graduated from high school during the Cultural Revolution. She answered CCP leader Mao Zedong’s call to join the “Down to the Countryside Movement’’, which encouraged young high school graduates to work in rural areas to bring the “revolution” to the countryside.

During the Cultural Revolution, Mao’s young Red Guards targeted teachers and the educated class since they were categorically viewed as a class of people who perpetuated “capitalist” views. Red Guards paraded teachers and those deemed to be part of the bourgeois class around the streets for public humiliation, torture, and lynchings.

At the same time, Mao called on China’s youths to move to the countryside and get “re-educated” with the peasants in the rural areas in the name of achieving communism. However, many students and youths died in harsh living and working conditions during this process. This created a lost generation in China who were denied an opportunity to receive a proper education.

Ms. Cheng came from a village that was one of the first places where young people were pushed to join the “Down to the Countryside Movement’’. Despite enthusiastically joining the movement initially, Ms. Cheng wrote an article years later in 1994 that concluded, “We have captured good memories from an era of carnage,” a statement seen as critical of the period and of the regime.

Mr. Li’s life trajectory was similar to his wife’s—he was also sent to rural China during the Cultural Revolution to perform hard labor picking stones from the mountains for the construction of a reservoir.

After the revolution, both Mr. Li and Ms. Cheng entered top universities in China to continue their education.

Li Once ‘Admired Western Concepts’

Wang Juntao, a Chinese pro-democracy activist and political scientist living in the United States, was once a Peking University student and friend of Mr. Li. He told The Epoch Times on Nov. 4 that Mr. Li was once an admirer of the Western concepts of freedom, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law.

Several professors at Peking University Law School even recommended Mr. Li to study in the United States, and he was accepted by Harvard University. However, he gave it up because he decided to go into the CCP’s political arena by staying at Peking University as a member of the Communist Youth League.

At the same time, Ms. Cheng entered Tsinghua University, another top university in China, in 1982 for studies. She married Mr. Li in 1983. In 1995, Ms. Cheng went to Brown University in the United States as a visiting scholar and was exposed to a different world.

After the Tiananmen Square Massacre on June 4, 1989, some Chinese university students dissatisfied with the communist regime chose to leave China while Mr. Li chose to remain as a CCP bureaucrat.

Mr. Wang said that many in his generation of Chinese students held strong beliefs in promoting China’s progress but in different directions. Mr. Li, for example, believed that to change the course of history, he needed to become a part of the [CCP] system.

“We shared the same vision, but we didn’t share the same path,” said Mr. Wang.

“We didn’t have any conflicts at that time. We just felt that we were both pushing for progress in China in different ways. However, after the June 4 [Tiananmen Square] Massacre in 1989, those who continue to remain a part of the government in China would have to comply with the regime to commit crimes, or must at least endorse it.”

Low-Profile Scholar

Perhaps the only person who knows the most about Mr. Li is his wife, Ms. Cheng.

In 2014, Mr. Li visited four African countries with her, and it was the first time Ms. Cheng participated in public life. It then became better known among the public that she held a PhD in literature and was a professor of English at China’s Capital University of Economics and Business. Her students twice voted her as one of the top ten lecturers at the university. She turned down academic promotions and consistently kept a low profile.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and his wife, Cheng Hong, are welcomed as they disembark from the airplane upon arrival in Berlin on July 8, 2018. Jorg Carstensen/DPA/AFP via Getty Images

Since Mr. Li became China’s vice-premier, Ms. Cheng gradually stopped teaching classes and turned to research. Academically, she was a leading scholar in American nature writing and pioneered the field in China, having translated many relevant works.

During her visit to Africa with Mr. Li, Ms. Cheng was seen communicating with foreign leaders and university students in fluent English, a rare quality among CCP leaders and their families. Most Chinese regime politicians do not speak English nor present themselves in such a scholarly manner.

Promising Generation

The late 70s generation of Chinese university students right after the Cultural Revolution was once regarded as the most promising generation that could push China out of the cult of Maoism and communism.

As the Chinese premier, Mr. Li spoke a few words of truth that people have remembered, such as pointing out that 600 million people in China earn only 1,000 yuan (US$137) a month.

Wu Guoguang, a senior research scholar at Stanford University and an alumnus of Mr. Li’s at Peking University, said that Mr. Li must have adapted to the CCP’s corrupt system as he climbed up the hierarchy of power, and even though he retained some common sense and empathy for the people, he cannot escape his demise in the CCP’s power struggles.

Mr. Wang said that Mr. Li’s life and death showed how the CCP is unredeemable.

“I think Li Keqiang’s tragedy fully shows that in the 1980s, many in China had the ambition to enter the CCP and to reform China through the regime itself,” Mr. Wang said.

“Now, they have proven this is not the way to go. Our only hope is for China to abandon the CCP and search for another way out without communism.”