Beijing CNN –
Jiang Zemin, the Chinese communist leader who paved the way for the country’s emergence as a world superpower, has died, state news agency Xinhua announced on Wednesday. He was 96 years old.
The former head of the ruling Communist Party and state president died in Shanghai on Wednesday of leukemia and associated multiple organ failure. He is survived by his wife, two children and two grandchildren.
After being shunned by the West after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, China, with Jiang as its primary leader, successfully reintegrated into the international community by regaining sovereignty over Hong Kong, winning the bid to host the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing and, perhaps most. important, join the World Trade Organization.
“He was probably the key catalyst for the big double-digit growth spurts for a decade or more because of that integration,” said Robert Lawrence Kuhn, author of a 2005 biography, “The Man Who Changed China: The Life and Legacy of Jiang Zemin.
“In terms of the economic trajectory that was set, I’m absolutely clear that it was set during that time, and it became irreversible toward the end of his tenure in office.”
Many observers, however, also see Jiang’s reign as sowing the seeds of widespread corruption, which remains a lightning rod for mass discontent to this day. He touted the benefit of “everyone quietly making a fortune” amid a continued emphasis on one-party rule rather than political reform.
Initially seen as a transitional figure, the relatively unknown Jiang was handpicked in 1989 by then-supreme leader Deng Xiaoping to lead the party after a bloody military crackdown on the pro-democracy movement across the country that same year led to the impeachment of Zhao Ziyang, the above. head of the party sympathizing with the protesters.
“Jiang was a contradictory figure and an accidental leader,” said Pin Ho, founder and chief executive of Mirror Media Group, an influential New York-based publisher of books and websites on Chinese politics. “He admired and respected Western cultures, but he also had to live within the Chinese political system.”
“He was not ready to become a thoughtful and visionary leader,” he added. “He only extended Deng’s rule by executing Deng’s policies.”
Those policies focused on economic liberalization and globalization, which led to improved living standards, as well as a widening of the wealth gap, while maintaining the party’s rigid control over political affairs, ideological and military in the world’s most populous nation.
Still, Jiang, a former party chief and mayor of Shanghai, China’s largest city, proved to be a far more astute politician than many had predicted, outmaneuvering a myriad of political rivals and consolidating power in the party and the army within a few years, especially after Deng’s death. in 1997. Installing key allies and protégés throughout the party and government, he led the so-called “Shanghai cabal,” whose influence outlasted his time in office.
In a telling display of Jiang’s relative openness and flexibility, he welcomed private business owners, effectively capitalists, into the Communist Party with open arms. In 2001, a year before he left office, Jiang declared that the party would formally accept businessmen as members, a significant move that reinvigorated the party and boosted China’s thriving private sector.
His rule was also marked by the government’s ruthless crackdown on Falun Gong, a spiritual movement that Beijing labeled an evil cult. Die-hard supporters of the group had called for Jiang’s arrest for “crimes against humanity” around the world, often hounding the Chinese leader during his visits abroad.
In late 2002, Jiang handed over the titles to his successor, Hu Jintao, first as party chief and then as president. But he held on to his post as military chief until 2005 and, even after his official retirement, continued to exert political influence behind the scenes, including the selection of China’s current leader, Xi Jinping, who recently assumed a record-breaking third term, paving the way to rule for life.
Xi, the most powerful leader of the People’s Republic since its founder Mao Zedong, has eviscerated political rivals that included Jiang’s faction. It has also reasserted the ruling Communist Party’s dominance over all aspects of Chinese society, rolling back many of the economic and personal freedoms seen under Deng, Jiang and Hu.
An unprecedented wave of protests against the country’s relentless “zero-Covid” policy has erupted in China in recent days, with some protesters in Shanghai calling for Xi to step down.
Born in eastern China in 1926 and educated in pre-communist Shanghai, Jiang trained as an electrical engineer. He joined the party while in college and studied in the former Soviet Union in the 1950s. In 1983 he gradually rose through the ranks of the party, becoming minister of electronics industry before being appointed mayor of Shanghai two years later.
Famous for wearing heavy, black-rimmed glasses, Jiang was also known for his penchant for showing off his language and artistic skills: reciting Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address in English and singing “O Sole Mio” in Italian in front of foreign dignitaries.
“I think that regardless of profession, if one can enjoy reading literature, enjoy a little music, it can be very helpful for a person’s healthy growth,” Jiang told CNN in a one-on-one interview in May. 1997.
Jiang’s flamboyant personality and cosmopolitan style, though sometimes ridiculed during his rule, have brought him unexpected online popularity in recent years as Chinese social media users increasingly recall a relatively more relaxed political and social atmosphere under his leadership.
Many often point to his surprising decision in 1997 to approve the live broadcast on national television of a joint press conference with Bill Clinton, during which he engaged in a heated debate with the visiting US president on the issue of human rights in China.
“I think he was underestimated during his lifetime,” said Orville Schell, a prominent American scholar of China. “Compared to Hu and Xi, he was very voluble, open and friendly.”
“He was one of the few Chinese leaders who wanted to be a normal world leader, not a communist dictator.”