Editing Li Peng (section)

===Defender of state control===
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In November 1987, after Premier [[Zhao Ziyang]] was promoted to [[General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party|CCP General Secretary]], Li became acting Premier. He was formally elected Premier in March 1988. At the time of his promotion, Li seemed like an unusual choice for Premier because he did not seem to share Deng's enthusiasm for introducing market reforms.<ref name=":3" /> Li was raised to the position of Premier thanks partially to the departure of [[Hu Yaobang]], who was forced to resign as General Secretary after the Party blamed him for a series of student-led protests in 1987.

Throughout the 1980s, political dissent and social problems, including inflation, urban migration, and [[school overcrowding]], became great problems in China. Despite these acute challenges, Li shifted his focus away from the day-to-day concerns of energy, communications, and raw materials allocation, and took a more active role in the ongoing intra-party debate on the pace of market reforms. Politically, Li opposed the modern economic reforms pioneered by Zhao Ziyang throughout Zhao's years of public service. In 1988, he downgraded the role of the System Reform Commission, a State Council body created by Zhao Ziyang.{{Sfn|Gewirtz|2022|p=200}} While students and intellectuals urged greater reforms, some party elders increasingly feared that the instability opened up by any significant reforms would threaten to undermine the authority of the Communist Party, which Li had spent his career attempting to strengthen.

After Zhao became General Secretary, his proposals in May 1988 to expand free enterprise led to popular complaints (which some suggest were politically inspired) about inflation fears. Public fears about the negative effects of market reforms gave conservatives (including Li Peng) the opening to call for greater centralization of economic controls and stricter prohibitions against Western influences, especially opposing further expansion of Zhao's more free enterprise-oriented approach. This precipitated a political debate, which grew more heated through the winter of 1988–1989.