Former President Jiang Zemin, who emerged from China’s isolation after the army crushed pro-democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in 1989 and supported economic reforms that led to a decade of explosive growth , died on Wednesday. He was 96 years old.
Jiang died in his hometown of Shanghai shortly after noon on Wednesday of leukemia and multiple organ failure, said Xinhua news agency, which published a letter to the Chinese people describing the death as “a loss incalculable” for the Communist Party government.
The letter described “our dear comrade Jiang Zemin” as an outstanding leader, a great Marxist, statesman, military strategist and diplomat. The online pages of state media, including the People’s Daily and Xinhua, turned black and white in mourning.
A surprise choice to lead a divided Communist Party after the turmoil of 1989, Jiang saw China through historic changes including a revival of market-oriented reforms, the return of Hong Kong from British rule in 1997 and Beijing’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 1997. 2001.
As China opened up to the outside world, Jiang’s government suppressed dissent at home. He jailed human rights, labor and democracy activists and banned the spiritual movement Falun Gong, which he saw as a threat to the Communist Party’s monopoly on power.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, left, and Jiang are pictured at the 19th Communist Party Congress on October 24, 2017 in Beijing. (Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)
Jiang relinquished his last official title in 2004, but remained a force behind the scenes of the feud that led to the rise of current President Xi Jinping, who took power in 2012. Xi s ‘has adhered to Jiang’s mix of economic liberalization and strict political controls.
Transformational leader
Initially seen as a transitional leader, Jiang was appointed on the verge of retirement with a mandate from Supreme Leader Deng Xiaoping to reunite the party and the nation.
But it proved transformative. In 13 years as general secretary of the Communist Party, the top position in China, he guided China’s rise to global economic power by welcoming capitalists into the Communist Party and attracting foreign investment after China joined the the WTO
Jiang walks past a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer after arriving at the Museum of Anthropology to attend the APEC summit in Vancouver in November 1997. (Andrew Winning/Reuters)
He presided over the nation’s rise as a global manufacturer, the return of Hong Kong and Macau from Britain and Portugal, and the achievement of a cherished dream: winning the bid to host the 2008 Beijing Olympics after a previous rejection.
Jiang was born on August 17, 1926 in the wealthy eastern city of Yangzhou. Official biographies downplay his family’s middle-class background, emphasizing his uncle and adoptive father, Jiang Shangqing, an early revolutionary who was killed in battle in 1939.
After graduating from the electrical machinery department of Shanghai Jiaotong University in 1947, Jiang worked his way up through the ranks of state-controlled industries, working in a food factory, then in soap manufacturing and in China’s largest automobile plant.
In 1983 he was appointed Minister of Electronics Industry, then a key but backward sector that the government hoped to revive by inviting foreign investment.
As mayor of Shanghai from 1985 to 1989, Jiang impressed foreign visitors as a representative of a new generation of outward-looking Chinese leaders.
The general secretary https:// ://t.co/rPLslf2Qvn
—@UN_Spokesman
Eliminate dissent
Despite a cool public image, Jiang dealt severely with challenges to the ruling party’s power.
His most high-profile target was Falun Gong, a meditation group. Chinese leaders were frightened by his ability to attract tens of thousands of followers, including military officers. Activists who tried to form an opposition China Democracy Party, a move allowed under Chinese law, were sentenced to up to 12 years in prison on subversion charges.
About 40 Falun Gong members are shown taking part in a silent protest in Hong Kong on October 1, 2004. Jiang had banned the movement as a threat to the Chinese Communist Party. (Samantha Sin/AFP/Getty Images)
“Stability above all,” Jiang ordered, in a phrase his successors have used to justify intensive social controls.
It was up to Jiang, alongside Britain’s Prince Charles, to preside over the return of Hong Kong on July 1, 1997, which symbolizes the end of 150 years of European colonialism. The nearby Portuguese territory of Macau was returned to China in 1999.
Britain’s Prince of Wales, center, shows the way to Jiang as British Prime Minister Tony Blair follows at the end of the ceremony marking the handover of Hong Kong to China on July 1, 1997. (Dylan Martinez/Reuters)
Hong Kong was promised autonomy and became a springboard for mainland companies to go overseas. Meanwhile, Jiang resorted to coercion with Taiwan, the self-governing island that Beijing says is part of its territory.
During Taiwan’s first direct presidential election in 1996, Jiang’s government tried to intimidate voters by firing missiles into nearby shipping lanes. The United States responded by sending warships to the area as a show of support.
Economic spoils, but inequality
At the same time, trade between the mainland and Taiwan grew to billions of dollars a year.
China’s economic boom divided society into winners and losers as waves of rural residents migrated to factory jobs in cities, the economy grew sevenfold and urban incomes nearly as much .
Jiang last appeared publicly alongside current and former leaders atop Beijing’s Tiananmen Gate in a 2019 military parade to celebrate the ruling party’s 70th anniversary.
He is survived by his two sons and his wife, Wang Yeping.
Jiang’s death comes at a tumultuous time in China, where authorities are grappling with rare widespread street protests among residents fed up with heavy-handed curbs on COVID-19 nearly three years into the pandemic.
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China is also in the midst of a sharp economic slowdown exacerbated by its zero-covid policy. Many users of Weibo, China’s Twitter-like platform, described Jiang’s death as the end of an era.
“I am very sad, not only because of his passing, but also because I really feel that an era has ended,” wrote one user from Henan province.