John Langenbrunner, the World Bank's chief health economist, described the results achieved by the reforms as unprecedented.

Li was also credited with seizing the opportunity presented by the 2008 financial crisis to propel complex fuel tax reforms involving multiple stakeholders.

The initiative has helped eliminate redundant fuel fees, inspired energy conservation and emission reduction, improved the refined oil pricing system and accumulated experience for future reforms.

This year, Li went to great lengths to tackle another bottleneck in tax reform. He conducted field surveys and led relevant departments to institute reform plans that replace turnover taxes with value-added taxes. After Shanghai spearheaded a pilot program, the tax burdens of the local service industry and small enterprises have been largely eased.

A prelude to the much-expected structural tax cut, the pilot program has now been expanded to nine provinces and municipalities as a significant institutional innovation for facilitating economic restructuring, boosting economic growth and improving people's living standards.

Li also led the formulation of China's 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-2015), which provides both overall guidance for the country's future development and specific guidance in nearly 100 areas.

Although Li was familiar with China's agricultural and industrial development as head of Henan and Liaoning provinces, he has gained a broader understanding of China's national circumstances after being put in charge of development and reform, fiscal affairs, urban-rural construction, environmental protection, land and resources and public health for the State Council.

He knows China's potential in economic and social development as well as the opportunities and challenges the country is facing.

To formulate a sound plan, Li conducted field surveys in a number of places and governmental departments, solicited opinions from lower-level officials, industrial experts and entrepreneurs and presided over symposiums to brainstorm plans concerning the tertiary and energy industries.

In-depth research was carried out for more than two years on significant issues, such as expanding domestic consumption in a sustainable manner, narrowing the urban-rural gap, designing an urbanization path and steadily improving people's living standards.

U.S. economist Michael Spence, a Nobel laureate, said the 12th Five-Year Plan is very complicated but clear. Its effective implementation will turn China into the most significant player in transforming economic growth patterns and rebalancing the world economy, he noted.

Joseph Stiglitz, also a Nobel laureate, said the development plan charts the direction of China's economic restructuring, with China's central task being to open up and better integrate with the outside world.

New responsibilities and opportunities will abound and the country will be more involved in reshaping the world economic order, he said.

Martin Feldstein, a professor of economics at Harvard University, noted the plan's important implications for the global economy. "Its key feature is to shift official policy from maximizing GDP growth toward raising consumption and average workers' standard of living," he noted.

Known as a tough troubleshooter, Li has regularly appeared where he has been needed most.

When food safety scares cropped up in 2010, Li was asked to head the State Council's food safety commission, orchestrating multisector cooperation.

"Food safety concerns every family and each person. Giving food safety offenders a knock-out blow is a must," Li stressed.

By including food safety in the performance assessment system for local governments, as well as cracking down on offenders, China has begun to see progress in curbing food safety scandals.

In early 2009, the world was caught off-guard by a new influenza A virus, with the World Health Organization issuing its highest influenza pandemic alert.

Not long after its outbreak in North America, the virus was transmitted to China, throwing the Chinese into a panic reminiscent of the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) epidemic in 2003.

Li decisively implemented joint prevention by all relevant departments and urged the quick development of vaccines, which stopped the spread of the virus and minimized its impact on China.

This triumph has been lauded as an exemplary emergency response to a sudden public health incident.

As China's current reforms involve a more complicated problem of interests, analysts say knowledge and a broad horizon are as important in Chinese leaders as courage and resources.

People First

Li's tenacity and decisiveness were shaped by his early days.

In March 1974, when China was being ravaged by the Cultural Revolution, 19-year-old Li was dispatched to Fengyang, a poverty-stricken county in east China's Anhui Province, to take up farming.

It was there he came to understand poverty and starvation.

He tilled the land during the day and read books at night. Admiring Li's spirit and his capacity to endure hardship, members of Dongling Brigade, Damiao Commune, chose him as Party chief.

"He was always the first to work, self-disciplined, down to earth and kind. As Party secretary, he never made people suffer, harmed no one and bullied no one," villagers recalled.

When the country resumed college entrance examination in 1977, Li took the exam and was accepted by the Law School of Peking University. Soon, he was elected chief of the university's Student Union. Upon graduation in 1982, he remained at Peking University to head its CYLC committee.

Three years later, the 30-year-old was chosen as a member of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the CYLC, an organization of advanced young people under the leadership of the CPC.

While working with the CYLC Central Committee, Li devoted his spare time to studying the Chinese economy. His doctoral dissertation, "On the Tri-structure of China's Economy," won him the Sun Yefang Prize, the top honor for economic sciences on the Chinese mainland.