Li New China Premier; Transition Nearly Over

Acting Premier Li Peng was appointed China’s new premier Saturday, and General Secretary Zhao Ziyang of the Communist Party was elected to a state military position commensurate with a party military post that he already held.

Election of Li and Zhao to the posts by the National People’s Congress nearly completes a transition, begun at a Communist Party congress last fall, to a younger set of leaders in top party and state positions.

Although Deng Xiaoping, 84, remains China’s paramount leader, he now has put into place a personnel structure aimed at ensuring that his reformist policies survive his eventual departure from the political scene.

Deng did not attend Saturday’s congress session, and no reason was given for his absence. He had attended Friday’s meeting and appeared to be in good health.

Trained in Soviet Union

Li, 59, a Soviet-trained engineer, often seems stiff in public appearances but is reputed to have a good grasp of technical issues involved in modernization. The adopted son of the late Premier Chou En-lai, Li has spent most of his career in China’s electric power industry. His rise into top levels of government and party began about a decade ago.

He was named a vice premier in 1983, and became acting premier last November after Zhao resigned the position to devote full time to his duties as head of the Communist Party, a more powerful post.

Zhao, 69, and China’s new President Yang Shangkun, 81, were elected Saturday as vice chairmen of the state Central Military Commission, which is headed by Deng. Zhao, Li and Yang all were elected without opposing candidates and with only about two dozen negative ballots cast against each from among the 2,877 delegates present for Saturday’s voting.

China also has a Communist Party Military Commission, in which Deng, Zhao and Yang hold the same positions as they do in the government military commission. Zhao was named to the party commission, as first vice chairman, in November. The two organizations have identical membership and function as a single body.

A key task facing Zhao in consolidating his position as Deng’s chosen successor is to win firmer support from top military leaders.

High-ranking People’s Liberation Army officers are believed to hold more respect for Deng and Yang--veteran revolutionaries and army leaders--than for Zhao, who has made his mark primarily in government and party affairs.

The official New China News Agency, in a long profile of Zhao that seemed aimed at building up his military status, emphasized that he has had military experience and outlined recent activities that strengthen his links with the army.

Zhao joined the Communist Party in 1938. During the next decade of wars against Japanese invaders and Nationalist Chinese troops, he served as a local party leader in Central China, the agency said.

During parts of the 1960s and 1970s, when Zhao held top party posts in Guangdong and Sichuan provinces, he also held military positions as political commissar, the New China News Agency noted.

During the early years of the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, Zhao “was persecuted and sent to work in a factory,” the news agency reported.

Li, on the other hand--presumably at least partly because of protection by his adoptive father, Premier Chou--was never knocked down during the Cultural Revolution.

Largely because he studied in Moscow, some analysts consider Li more favorably inclined toward the Soviet Union than are many other top Chinese leaders.

The New China News Agency, addressing this issue Saturday, reported that “a Western correspondent once asked him whether he was pro-Soviet Union.”

The agency continued: “Li Peng replied: ‘You cannot say that one is politically pro a particular country just because he has studied in that country. Many of the veteran revolutionaries in the older generation had studied in the Soviet Union. Can you say they are all pro-Soviet? I am a Chinese and a member of the Chinese Communist Party, and I act in accordance with the line of the party and the interests of the motherland.’ ”