Li Xiannian (1909–1992)

Chinese communist politician, member of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Politburo from 1956, and state president 1983–88. He fell from favour during the 1966–69 Cultural Revolution, but was rehabilitated as finance minister in 1973, by Zhou Enlai, and proceeded to implement cautious economic reform.

During the 1950s and early 1960s Li was vice premier to the State Council and minister for finance and was inducted into the CCP Politburo and Secretariat in 1956 and 1958 respectively. He was elected to the Politburo's controlling Standing Commitee in 1977, where he was to remain until 1987, and he was state president in June 1983. As part of a general move to retire the CCP's ageing ‘old guard’, Li stepped down as president in April 1988 and became chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, a broad-based discussion forum. The father-in-law of Jiang Zemin, Li remained influential as a ‘party elder’ until his death in 1992, establishing himself as a critic of destabil excessive liberalization.

Born into a poor peasant family in Hubei province, Li trained as a carpenter and joined the Kuomintang (nationalist) forces during the ‘Northern Expedition’ of 1926–27. He joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) later in 1927 and became a leading figure in the rural soviet (workers' republic) set up at Oyuwan on the borders of Hubei, Henan and Anhui provinces, 1931–33. During the ‘Long March’ of 1934–35, northwards to Yanan, in Shaanxi province, and the Liberation War of 1937–49 Li served as a political commissar. He was made commander of the Central China military region in 1944 and in 1949 governor of Hubei.