Li Keqiang: Scholar who passed up foreign study for party

The political life of Li Keqiang began in a destitute village. In 1974, at the age of 19, Mr Li, a high school graduate from Hefei No8 Secondary School, shared the fate of tens of thousands of intellectuals at the time and was sent to work as a farmer in a rural brigade. Mr Li was sent to the Dongling brigade of the Damiao commune in Anhui province's Fengyang county, where he spent four years living and working with farmers and several other intellectual youths from Anhui and Shanghai.

The conditions in Fengyang were grim - not surprising, given that the place is best known for a song sung by beggars blaming drought for their poverty and starvation. But Mr Li, though very much an urban youth, coped well.

'He worked very hard. He was pretty good at farm work,' said Peng Jingshan , party secretary of Dongling village from 1958 to 2004.

Mr Li studied at one of Hefei's best secondary schools. His father was a middle-ranking cadre - an 'old revolutionary' who joined the party in its early years and later worked as a department director in Bengbu's courts, his associates said.

Mr Peng played a crucial role in Mr Li's political life - he nominated him for party membership, an honour and an entry ticket to a political career in China. Mr Peng, 69, said he decided to nominate Mr Li - one of only two put forward from among the intellectuals sent to the village - because of his contribution to the land.

Mr Peng said Mr Li spent most of his time reading and seldom showed emotion, unlike many youths disillusioned by the village's misery. 'He brought a box of books with him and he read a lot,' Mr Peng said.