CONFIDENTIAL
LI PENG: MEMBER OF THE POLITBURO AND SECRETARIAT OF THE CHINESE COMMUNIST PARTY (CCP) CENTRAL COMMITTEE;
VICE-PREMIER; MINISTER OF THE STATE EDUCATION COMMISSION
1.
Li Peng was born in 1928 in Shanghai although his family come from Sichuan Province in southwest China and
Li has good he spent some of his early years there. revolutionary credentials: his father was Li Shouxun, a communist guerrilla leader who was executed by the Nationalists in 1931. As a child he and his mother lived in the city of Chongqing, in Sichuan, where he attended school. From the age of 11 he was taken under the wing of Zhou Enlai, (already a prominent Communist Party leader and the future Premier), and his wife, Deng Yingchao, (herself a member of the Politburo between 1976 and 1985). They sent him to the Communist base area of Yanan in 1941, where he attended the Institute of Natural Sciences. He joined the CCP in 1945.
He
After completing his education in China in 1946, Li worked briefly as a technician in the power industry. then studied hydropower at the Moscow Dynamics Institute between 1948 and 1955, during which time he was Chairman of the Federation of Chinese Students in the Soviet Union. On returning to China, he worked for ten years as an engineer and later manager of various power plants in northeast China. In 1966, at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, he was transferred to Peking where he eventually took on the important post of Director of the Peking Power Administration Bureau and also served as the Secretary of its Party leading group.
3. Li's progress accelerated after 1979 when he became successively Vice-Minister of Power Industry, Minister of Power Industry and First Vice-Minister of Water Conservancy and Power. In the latter post he first gained responsibility for the Guangdong Nuclear Project
It and visited Britain in this connection in 1982. became clear that Li was destined for high office in 1983 when he was appointed a Vice-Premier and was named by Hu Yaobang as one of five up and coming people who would be future leaders. As a Vice-Premier, Li has been responsible for the key sectors of energy, transport and communications, together with the electronics and computer industries. In 1985, he was additionally made head of the newly-formed State Education Commission, to preside over a major strengthening of the Chinese education system. (Note: there are currently five Vice-Premiers. Li's colleague and potential rival, Vice-Premier Tian Jiyan, visited Britain in 1985 with Premier Zhao Ziyang).
CONFIDENTIAL
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