China's Li Keqiang, a premier schooled in free thought

China's new premier, Li Keqiang, stands out for his casual and disarming command of English in contrast with some other top leaders who can stand around looking awkward in the presence of English-speaking dignitaries.
Li arrived at university in early 1978 from Anhui province in eastern China, a poor farming area where his father was an official and where he was sent to toil in the fields during the Cultural Revolution.
He chose law, a discipline silenced for years as a reactionary pursuit and in the late 1970s still steeped in Soviet-inspired doctrines.
In a brief memoir of his time at university, Li paid tribute to Gong Xiangrui, one of the few Chinese law professors schooled in the West to survive Mao's purges, and recalled the heady atmosphere of the time.
His ascent marks an extraordinary rise for a man who, as a youth, worked on a commune in Anhui's Fengyang County - notoriously poor even for Mao's time and one of the first places to quietly revive private bonuses in farming in the late 1970s. By the time he left, Li was a party member and secretary of his production brigade.
In spite of his liberal past, Li's elevation is unlikely to bring much change on the political front, where reform would require more unified support for any serious change.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/03/15/us-china-parliament-premier-newsmaker-idUSBRE92E06H20130315