Li Peng

Li Peng's record is measured in offices, not trophies. He was the fourth Premier of the People's Republic of China, serving from 1987 to 1998, and then Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress until 2003. He was one of the few top leaders of his generation with a real technical specialty, hydroelectric engineering, and the Three Gorges Dam was initiated while he held the premiership. He also carried the heaviest political baggage of any Chinese leader of his era: the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown is inseparable from his name, and it is the reason his obituaries led where they did. Whatever else he built, that decision is what the world remembers.