Early life and career Li was born in 1950 in
Lianshui County,
Huai'an city,
Jiangsu province, to Li Gancheng (), a Communist Party official and later vice mayor of Shanghai, and Lü Jiying (), a Communist revolutionary from
Shuyang County in northern Jiangsu province. He was the fourth son among their seven children and was named
Yuanchao () 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.
Jiangsu 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. At the 16th Party Congress held in 2002, Li failed to secure a seat to the Central Committee and was elected only an alternate member. However, at the time of the election, Li had already been agreed upon by senior party leaders to serve in the top post in Jiangsu, causing an awkward and rare situation where Li would serve as a party chief of a major province without holding a full seat on the Central Committee. Li served as the
Party Secretary of Jiangsu between 2002 and 2007. During his tenure in Jiangsu, Li assessed local officials in terms of performance measured by social and environmental factors, as opposed to purely economic ones. In response to the corruption case of Xu Guojian, the head of the provincial Organization Department, Li said, "Jiangsu is beginning the biggest anti-corruption drive since the founding of the People's Republic."
Politburo Seen as an ally of General Secretary
Hu Jintao and a member of the
tuanpai due to his Communist Youth League background, Li became a member of the
Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party and the head of the
Organization Department of the Chinese Communist Party after the
17th Party Congress in October 2007. After the
18th Party Congress, Li Yuanchao was no longer the head of the Organization Department of the Chinese Communist Party. Since 19 November 2012, his successor is
Zhao Leji. Li was said to favour political reform. During the
2012 National Congress of the CCP, Li was considered a contender for promotion to the
Politburo Standing Committee but was blocked by former general secretary
Jiang Zemin, in what was seen as a major defeat for Hu Jintao. However, he continued to serve on the 25-member Politburo, for which he was first selected in 2007.
Vice president In March 2013, Li was elected to be the
Vice President. The post of vice-president had been held since 1998 by the top-ranked Secretary of the party's Secretariat; Li's selection as vice president broke this fifteen-year convention; this meant Li was also the first vice-president without a seat on the Politburo Standing Committee since 1998. In 2018, Li retired from office and was succeeded by Vice President
Wang Qishan. ==Publication==