Li Yuanchao

Li Yuanchao (born 20 November 1950) is a retired Chinese politician. He was the Vice President of China from 2013 to 2018 and the Honorary President of the Red Cross Society of China. He was a member of the Secretariat of the Chinese Communist Party and head of the Organization Department between 2007 and 2012. From 2002 to 2007, Li served as the Chinese Communist Party Secretary of Jiangsu, the top leader of an area of significant economic development. Between 2007 and 2017, he held a seat for two terms on the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party.

Li Yuanchao played an important role in the reform and opening up under Chinese leaders Deng Xiaoping and Chen Yun. He studied mathematics at university, and in 1983, Shanghai party chief Chen Pixian recommended Li Yuanchao to head the Shanghai Communist Youth League organization. Once considered a rising political star, Li gradually faded from the political scene.

Li was born in 1950 in Lianshui County, Huai'an city, Jiangsu province, to Li Gancheng (李干成), a Communist Party official and later vice mayor of Shanghai, and Lü Jiying (吕继英), a Communist revolutionary from Shuyang County in northern Jiangsu province. He was the fourth son among their seven children and was named Yuanchao (援朝) after the "campaign to aid North Korea." Later in life, he would change the characters of this name to 源潮 while maintaining the pronunciation Yuanchao. Li attended Shanghai High School in Shanghai, where he graduated in 1966, shortly prior to the Cultural Revolution. During the Cultural Revolution, he worked in Dafeng County, Jiangsu, performing manual labour.

In 1973, Li was recommended to enter East China Normal University to study mathematics. He then worked as a teacher at the Nanchang Secondary School in Shanghai, then an instructor at the industry vocational college of Luwan District in Shanghai. After the resumption of the National College Entrance Examination Li was admitted to pursue a master's degree from Fudan University in mathematics. He joined the Chinese Communist Party in June 1978. In 1981, after graduating, he stayed at Fudan to teach as a lecturer and held a leadership position in the Communist Youth League organization of the university.

In 1983, Li was promoted on recommendation from then Shanghai party chief Chen Pixian to head the Shanghai Communist Youth League organization at age 32. Shortly thereafter he became a member of the Central Secretariat of the Communist Youth League, in charge of propaganda and ideology. He served in the post until 1991. During his time at the Youth League, Li obtained through part-time study a master's degree in economic management from Peking University under the supervision of economist Li Yining, and a doctoral degree (also on a part-time basis) in law from the Central Party School in 1998.

In March 2019, Agence France-Presse reported that 20 paragraphs of his doctoral dissertation Some Issues Concerning the Production of Socialist Culture and Art had been plagiarised from a thesis written by Zhang Mingeng.

In 1993, Li was named deputy head of the State Council Information Office. In 1996, he became Vice Minister of Culture. In 2001, he pursued mid-career training at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

In 2001, Li was elevated to Deputy Party Secretary of Jiangsu province and concurrently party secretary of the provincial capital Nanjing. In October 2001, a mere month after he took office, Li garnered attention by firing several municipal officials accused of sexually harassing female hotel employees.