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Beijing: 

Former Premier Li Keqiang, China’s top economic official for a decade, died Friday of a heart attack. He was 68.

Li was China’s No. 2 leader from 2013-23 and an advocate for private business but was left with little authority after President Xi Jinping made himself the most powerful Chinese leader in decades and tightened control over the economy and society.

CCTV said Li had been resting in Shanghai recently and had a heart attack on Thursday. He died at 12:10 am Friday.

Li, an English-speaking economist, was considered a contender to succeed then-Communist Party leader Hu Jintao in 2013 but was passed over in favor of Xi. Reversing the Hu era’s consensus-oriented leadership, Xi centralized powers in his own hands, leaving Li and others on the party’s ruling seven-member Standing Committee with little influence.

As the top economic official, Li promised to improve conditions for entrepreneurs who generate jobs and wealth. But the ruling party under Xi increased the dominance of state industry and tightened control over tech and other industries. Foreign companies said they felt unwelcome after Xi and other leaders called for economic self-reliance, expanded an anti-spying law and raided offices of consulting firms.

Li was dropped from the Standing Committee at a party congress in Oct 2022 despite being two years below the informal retirement age of 70.

The same day, Xi awarded himself a third five-year term as party leader, discarding a tradition under which his predecessors stepped down after 10 years. Xi filled the top party ranks with loyalists, ending the era of consensus leadership and possibly making himself leader for life. The No 2 slot was filled by Li Qiang, the party secretary for Shanghai, who lacked Li Keqiang’s national-level experience and later told reporters that his job was to do whatever Xi decided.

Li Keqiang, a former vice premier, took office in 2013 as the ruling party faced growing warnings the construction and export booms that propelled the previous decade’s double-digit growth were running out of steam.

Government advisers argued Beijing had to promote growth based on domestic consumption and service industries. That would require opening more state-dominated industries and forcing state banks to lend more to entrepreneurs.

Li’s predecessor, Wen Jiabao, apologized at a March 2012 news conference for not moving fast enough.

In a 2010 speech, Li acknowledged challenges including too much reliance on investment to drive economic growth, weak consumer spending and a wealth gap between prosperous eastern cities and the poor countryside, home to 800m people.

Li was seen as a possible candidate to revive then-supreme leader Deng Xiaoping’s market-oriented reforms of the 1980s that started China’s boom. But he was known for an easygoing style, not the hard-driving impatience of Zhu Rongji, the premier in 1998-2003 who ignited the construction and export booms by forcing painful reforms that cut millions of jobs from state industry.

Li was believed to have supported the “China 2030” report released by the World Bank and a Cabinet research body in 2012 that called for dramatic changes to reduce the dominance of state industry and rely more on market forces.

The Unirule Institute, an independent think tank in Beijing, said state industry was so inefficient that its return on equity—a broad measure of profitability—was negative six percent. Unirule later was shut down by Xi as part of a campaign to tighten control over information.

In his first annual policy address, Li in 2014 was praised for promising to pursue market-oriented reform, cut government waste, clean up air pollution and root out pervasive corruption that was undermining public faith in the ruling party.

Xi took away Li’s decision-making powers on economic matters by appointing himself to head a party commission overseeing reform.

Xi’s government pursued the anti-graft drive, imprisoning hundreds of officials including former Standing Committee member Zhou Yongkang. But party leaders were ambivalent about the economy. They failed to follow through on a promised list of dozens of market-oriented changes. They increased the dominance of state-owned banks and energy and other companies.

Xi’s government opened some industries including electric car manufacturing to private and foreign competition. But it built up state-owned “national champions” and encouraged Chinese companies to use domestic suppliers instead of imports.

Borrowing by companies, households and local governments increased, pushing up debt that economists warned already was dangerously high.

Beijing finally tightened controls in 2020 on debt in real estate, one of China’s biggest industries. That triggered a collapse in economic growth, which fell to three percent in 2022, the second-lowest in three decades.

Li showed his political skills but little zeal for reform as governor and later party secretary of populous Henan province in central China in 1998-2004.

Li earned the nickname “Three Fires Li” and a reputation for bad luck after three fatal fires struck Henan while he was there. A Christmas Day blaze at a nightclub in 2000 killed 309 people. Other officials were punished but Li emerged unscathed.

Meanwhile, provincial leaders were trying to suppress information about the spread of AIDS by a blood-buying industry in Henan.

Li’s reputation for bad luck held as China suffered a series of deadly disasters during his term.

Days after he took office, a landslide on 29 March 2013, killed at least 66 miners at a gold mine in Tibet and left 17 others missing and presumed dead.

In the eastern port of Tianjin, a warehouse holding chemicals exploded 12 Aug 2015, killing at least 116 people.

A China Eastern Airlines jetliner plunged into the ground on 22 March 2022, killing all 132 people aboard. Authorities have yet to announce a possible cause.

Li oversaw China’s response to Covid-19, the first cases of which were detected in the central city of Wuhan. Then-unprecedented controls were imposed, shutting down most international travel for three years and access to major cities for weeks at a time.

In one of his last major official acts, Li led a Cabinet meeting that announced 11 Nov 2022, that anti-virus controls would be relaxed to reduce disruption after the economy shrank by 2.6 percent in the second quarter of the year. Two weeks later, the government announced most travel and business restrictions would end the following month.

Li was born July 1, 1955, in the eastern province of Anhui and by 1976 was ruling party secretary of a commune there.

Studying law at Peking University, he was the campus secretary of the ruling party’s Communist Youth League, an organization that launched the political careers of former party leaders Hu Jintao and Hu Yaobang. He was a member of the League’s Standing Committee, a sign he was seen as future leadership material.

After serving in a series of party posts, Li received his PhD in economics in 1994 from Peking University.

Following Henan, Li served as party secretary for Liaoning province in the northeast as part of a rotation through provincial posts and at ministries in Beijing that was meant to prepare leaders. He joined the party Central Committee in 2007.

AP

Solukhumbu: A foreign national has been discovered deceased in Khumbu Pasang Lhamu Rural Municipality-4 of Solukhumbu.

The body of Janaros, a 46-year-old visitor from the Czech Republic, who had been exploring the Sagarmatha region, was located in the Cholapik area, as reported by the Solukhumbu District Police Office. According to the office's information officer, Inspector Anil Mishra, Janaros, who had recently returned from his expedition on Cholapik Mountain, was found lifeless approximately 500 meters below the mountain at around 1 o'clock on Wednesday afternoon.

The deceased's body was airlifted and transported to Lukla by helicopter on Thursday, with the process of sending it to Kathmandu already underway. The Solukhumbu District Police Office has stated that further investigation into the incident is ongoing.

Manang Air pilot Prakash Sedhai, who was critically injured in the chopper crash, has died.

A Manang Air helicopter with the call sign 9N-ANJ flying towards Solukhumbhu had crashed in Lobuche on October 14. Pilot Sedhai, who was the only one onboard, was seriously injured in the incident.

The chopper caught fire after it crashed while landing.

He was immediately airlifted to HAMS Hospital in Kathmandu for treatment.

Sedhai was later taken to Mumbai for further treatment after he could not be treated at the Kathmandu-based hospital.

He breathed his last during the course of treatment at the National Burn Center in Mumbai on Tuesday.

Pilot Sedhai died in the course of treatment despite the tireless efforts of the doctors, reads a statement issued by Manang Air.

According to Manang Air, the mortal remains of Sedhai will be brought to Kathmandu today itself.

Rajendra Parajuli is a prominent name in Nepali literature. He is well known for his journalistic writings and critical reviews. A permanent resident of Koteshwor, Kathmandu, he used to write on discrimination, injustice, and socio-economic issues among others. The writer will now be remembered through his work.

Parajuli was rushed to B&B Hospital, Gwarko, Lalitpur, on the night of Sept 11. He was suffering from pneumonia and had developed some complications. He was admitted to the ICU and died at 7:00 in the morning the next day. He was 59. Parajuli was cremated the same day. He is survived by a wife, a son, and a daughter.

Some of his notable works are Koteshworko Keto, Shukraraj Shastri ko Chasma, Aghori, Aanayika, Jadako Bhok, Sapanama Marx, and Bikalpa Yatra. Jantarmantar, a collection of 15 short stories, was his most recent work. The stories in the collection deal with the issues in the country’s politics, the decade-long people’s war, and the effects of the economy and politics in Nepali society.

Parajuli has also written essays and poems in which he has explored various negative emotions like sadness and worry. He was passionate about reading.

He had been active in journalism for more than three decades. He worked at Nepal Samacharpatra, Abhiyan Dainik, Baarakhari, Nagarik, Himal Khabarpatrika, Spacetimes, Kantipur daily, and Capital magazine.

“Gaju, you must write and keep on writing, a senior writer who used to say such is no longer with us. My hands are shaking as I write these words. The eyes are filled with tears. Parajuli, who loved me dearly, my former colleague, brother, senior journalist, and writer, passed away during the course of treatment. Condolences,” wrote journalist Gajendra Budathoki on Twitter.

Nayan Raj Pandey, Parajuli’s friend for over 30 years, remembers him as someone with incredible strength and courage. According to Pandey, Parajuli was an honest reviewer who used to openly talk about both his and other people’s works. He took criticism well. Pandey says he has not been able to accept the fact that his friend is no more. “It feels like we will meet another day.”

Parajuli believed that you don’t write reviews to make someone happy or sad. A review, he always said, was a dissection of the book. He was also of the view that a review, good or bad, is an advertisement in itself.

Autobiographies, he felt, should not be a glorified presentation of the writer. Rather, the author should include his/her weaknesses as well. Working on an autobiography could well be a way of self-evaluation. He believed you were your own critic when working on an autobiography.

Birth: 24 April 1964, Kathmandu

Death: 12 September 2023, Kathmandu