China's most controversial premier Li Peng dies at 91

China's former premier Li Peng, regarded as a staunch supporter of the ruling Communist Party's iron-fisted clampdown on the pro-democracy student protests at the Tiananmen Square in 1989, died in Beijing, officials said here on Tuesday.

Li died of illness in Beijing at the age of 91 on Monday night, an official statement said.

Li visited India in 2001 as the Chairman of the Standing Committee of China's National People's Congress, the communist nation's Parliament.

State-run news agency Xinhua described Li as "a loyal communist warrior" and "an outstanding leader of the Communist Party and the state". However, he is widely known as the "Butcher of Beijing" for his hard-line approach to quell the 1989 protests at the Tiananmen Square in which hundreds of people were reportedly killed.

Born in 1928 in the family of a Communist revolutionary, Li became an orphan after his father was executed by the previous Kuomintang government.

He was raised by former Chinese premier Zhou Enlai and his wife Deng Yingchao and grew up to become one of China's most prominent and controversial leaders.

However Li dismissed as rumours that he was the adopted son of the late premier Zhou, although he said he was close to him and Deng.

In his memoir published in 2014, Li wrote that his relation with Zhou and Deng was like "a relationship between old comrades and martyrs' descendants."