FORMER Premier Li Peng, a core third-generation Party leader, has released a new autobiography that has already become a national best seller.

    In the book, Li specifically clears a long-circulated rumor that he was Zhou Enlai’s adopted son. He also recounts his younger days together with the country’s early founders, including Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping and Chen Yun.

    “My relationship with Premier Zhou and Mother Deng [Zhou’s wife, Deng Yingchao] is that of veteran comrades and orphans of the revolutionary martyrs. They treated me and other children of revolutionary martyrs with love and care,” Li writes in his memoir.

    Li met Deng for the first time in Chengdu in 1939, and she took him to Zhou’s home in Chongqing. Zhou was already in Yanan, the Party’s revolutionary base in Shaanxi Province.

    Li did not meet Zhou in person until the autumn of 1940, according to the memoir. Zhou asked him to read and comment on an editorial in the Xinhua Daily, the first Communist Party newspaper, as a test for his studies. He also told him to correct his hunched posture.

    Li described Zhou as a “meticulous” and “responsible” person and said those qualities played an important role in redressing some of the injustices from the Cultural Revolution.

    The book, entitled “Li Peng Memoir: 1928-1983” recounts Li’s life and career from 1928, when he was born, to 1983, when he was named vice premier. The book contains 16 compelling chapters and is filled with more than 130 photos.

    The memoir is a joint publication between the Central Committee Documents Press and the China Electric Power Press, as the latter published several of Li’s other works on electric power systems.

    Zhang Dalong, Li’s editor, told Chinese media that the 86-year-old former premier wrote all of the book’s content himself and even prepared the photos on a computer before handing the manuscript off to his publishers.

    “He was a science major and operates computers well,” Zhang said, adding that Li has formed a habit of writing every day, and the book is a result of his “little habit.”

    One chapter of the book is dedicated to Li’s marriage and family.

    Deng offered Li’s family help when his first son, Li Xiaopeng, now the governor of Shanxi Province, was born prematurely in 1959.

    Li’s wife, Zhu Lin, fell on a bus at the end of May that year while she was still pregnant, and it was feared she might miscarry. Li Peng’s mother sought the help of Deng, who contacted a renowned obstetrician at the Peking Union Medical College Hospital.

    Zhu’s condition was critical, but mother and child survived. Li Xiaopeng was born on June 7, 1959. At that time, Li was working as deputy chief engineer at a power plant in Jilin and was absent during the whole affair.

    Li reveals he had a vasectomy after the birth of his daughter, Li Xiaolin, who now heads energy company China Power International Development, and his second son, Li Xiaoyong. This was before the introduction of the one-child policy.

    “Li is not only a witness of the Party’s Yanan era, but is also a practitioner of the Yanan spirit,” The People’s Daily commented, as it introduced the memoir Friday, July 4.

    (Xinhua-Agencies)