Li Keqiang death: is China's reform era officially over?

As premier, Li Keqiang was "Nominally China's No. 2 leader" and was in charge of the economy until late last year. Li was the only member of the Politburo Standing Committee to have "Openly advocated" for the continuation of former leader Deng Xiaoping's "Open-door policy", which "Ran counter to the instincts of Xi Jinping", Willy Lam, a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation think tank in the US, told CNN. His death "Means the loss of a prominent moderating voice within the senior levels of the Chinese Communist Party", Ian Chong, from the Carnegie China think tank, told the BBC, with "No one apparently being able to take over the mantle". The death of Mao Zedong in 1976 had "Cleared the way for a new mix of economic ideas", wrote Yuan Yang for the Financial Times earlier this year, but now, she added, many in China are "Heralding the end of the reform era". Xi has turned away from reform led by the private sector, positioned to make China "More attractive to foreign investors", said The Diplomat, to a "More cautious and balanced approach to economic development, embodied in the 'common prosperity' campaign". Dake Kang, a Beijing-based correspondent for The Associated Press, wrote on social media earlier this year that he tells the "Stream of visitors returning to China" after Covid restrictions "That we've entered a new era - the post reform era". Predictions about economic affairs in China are always tricky, because politics in China is an "Opaque black box", wrote Keith B Richburg for The Washington Post, so "Nobody knows for sure" what is going on there. The "Challenges" the nation is facing "Don't necessarily mean China has now entered a period of decline", said Axios.