Jiang Zemin dies: Red engineer who rose to power in China aged 96 – BBC News 中文

While every Chinese leader has his own style, Jiang Zemin is definitely one of a kind. He is full of personality, masters English, Russian and other languages, is willing to show off his musical attainments, and doesn’t mind showing his “true temperament” occasionally. When he visited the United States, he confidently sang Peking Opera and played the guitar, “talked and laughed happily” with well-known American reporters in English, and once angrily denounced Hong Kong reporters as “too naive”.

As China’s leader, he guided China through a series of major changes of historic significance. During his reign, China transformed from a backward country into the fastest growing country in the world, and its relations with the West also improved greatly.

He pushed Sino-US relations out of the low tide after the “Tiananmen” crackdown, led China to join the World Trade Organization, deepened market reforms, opened up the “China-speed” economic take-off, and witnessed the transfer of sovereignty of Hong Kong and Macau from Western countries to the Chinese government.

Jiang Zemin was primarily a reformer, not a reformer, and his main goal was to secure the future of the Chinese Communist Party through a series of economic reforms. His critics believe that he only focuses on economic development, neglects political reform, and pays too much attention to personal image. During his tenure, he strengthened the Chinese Communist regime’s control over the military, suppressed Falun Gong with an iron fist, and took a tough stance on Taiwan.

The last time Jiang Zemin appeared in public was in October 2019 at the military parade marking the 70th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China. At that time, he looked a little frail. On the same day, with the support of the two, he walked slowly to the front row on the second floor of the Tiananmen Gate Tower with Xi Jinping and Hu Jintao. During the tens of minutes of the event, he mostly wore sunglasses, sat on a chair specially set up for him, and had little interaction with the parade troops and parade people passing by downstairs. He also didn’t respond when he walked past the square carrying a large portrait of him and the slogan “Three Represents” symbolizing his political ideology.

This is exactly 30 years since he ascended to the core position of the third-generation leadership of the Communist Party of China. In the summer of 1989, the CCP sent troops to suppress student petitioners gathered in Tiananmen Square. Zhao Ziyang, then general secretary of the CCP who advocated political reform, was forced to step down because he opposed Deng Xiaoping’s instructions. Jiang Zemin, then secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee, was selected by Deng Xiaoping. He became the nominal supreme leader of the Communist Party of China.

In the next thirty years, he gradually mastered military, political, personnel and other powers step by step from a transitional general secretary who was not favored by the outside world, becoming the most powerful person in China after the death of Deng Xiaoping.

In 1926, Jiang Zemin was born in Yangzhou, Jiangsu, which was under the control of the government of the Republic of China. At the age of 13, his uncle Jiang Shangqing, an underground member of the Communist Party of China, died unexpectedly and had no children. Jiang Zemin’s father adopted him to Wu Yueqing, Jiang Shangqing’s widow. Coincidentally, in 1946, when the Kuomintang and the Communist Party were at war in mainland China, Jiang Zemin, who was studying in the Electrical Engineering Department of Shanghai Jiaotong University, also chose to join the Chinese Communist Party.

At the beginning of his career, Jiang Zemin lived abroad for a long time. He was trained in an automobile factory in Moscow and engaged in diplomatic work in Romania. In the biography “He Changed China: A Biography of Jiang Zemin” approved by Jiang Zemin, the author Robert Lawrence Kuhn said that Jiang Zemin’s international vision began to take shape during this period.

Before he took over the top job in the Communist Party of China, he had no experience in handling national affairs. In the 1980s, Jiang Zemin became the minister of China’s electronics industry and later rose to the position of secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China. Neither as a technocrat nor in Shanghai, Jiang Zemin’s work attracted little attention, nor did he reveal any more political ambitions. In “Jiang Zemin Biography”, Jiang Zemin’s friend Shen Yongnian revealed that Jiang had planned to return to his alma mater, Shanghai Jiaotong University, as a professor and return to academia after retirement.

What pushed him into the center of power was an important turning point in the history of the CCP—the “June 4th” incident. While Chinese leaders in Beijing are debating how to deal with the student demonstrators occupying Tiananmen Square, Jiang Zemin has quelled similar protests in Shanghai.

He shut down a newspaper he thought would incite protests and surprised students by reciting Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address in English when he addressed them. This approach to quelling demonstrations without using force impressed China’s paramount leader at the time, Deng Xiaoping.

After the “June 4th” crackdown, Deng Xiaoping was in the midst of factional struggles within the CCP. In the end, he chose to stand with the hardliners, purged the liberals, and appointed Jiang Zemin as the party’s general secretary, in fact confirming his successor status.

“If a country lives and dies for the benefit of the country, it is better to avoid it because of misfortune or good fortune,” Jiang Zemin is said to have said when accepting this life-changing personnel arrangement.

At the beginning of taking office, the outside world was not optimistic about his political career prospects. Some people in Shanghai called him a “vase”, with too much pretense and no real content. Many see him as merely a transitional figure.

There are also some China observers who criticize him and make harsh remarks. His big glasses, stubborn personality, and unique attire with his trousers almost pulled up to his chest all became the focus of attention. Many have tried to paint him as a dull bureaucrat.

But Jiang Zemin proved that they were all wrong.

After becoming the general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, factional struggles within the CCP have not stopped. Conservatives headed by CCP veteran Chen Yun advocated a planned economy, and Deng Xiaoping, who supported market economic reforms, had always had differences on China’s future reform and opening up and economic construction. The “outsider” Jiang Zemin wavered between the two factions, and even tended to be conservative at one point.

He overhauled the propaganda machine to send his message across the country that the movement for greater democracy would not be tolerated.

At this time, Deng Xiaoping was worried that the pace of reform would slow down or even stagnate, and he began to express doubts about Jiang Zemin’s way of governing. In 1992, during Deng Xiaoping’s southern tour, he made a statement while visiting Zhuhai and held a military meeting attended by two vice-chairmen of the Military Commission. Jiang Zemin exerted pressure.

Feeling the pressure, Jiang Zemin decided to fully support the new economic reform policy. Since then, in China, the centrally controlled socialist planned economy has ceased to exist, and China has begun to implement market economic reforms under strict government control.

Wu Qiang, a Chinese political scientist, believes that, judging from the records of Jiang Zemin’s political career, he has an obvious “opportunist” color. He believes that Jiang Zemin, as a leader of a technocratic background, is not the “one of his own” as the CCP veterans think, so he is only a “gatekeeper” for the regime.

In 1993, Jiang Zemin officially assumed the presidency of China, and became a Chinese leader who combined the three highest positions of General Secretary of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, President of the State and Chairman of the Central Military Commission.

By the time of Deng Xiaoping’s death in February 1997, Jiang Zemin had had enough time to gain a foothold and installed his cronies from Shanghai in many important positions, including Zhu Rongji, who would become the Chinese government’s premier, and the highest official to vice president. Zeng Qinghong and others have more policy decision-making power and leadership.

Zhu Rongji was mayor of Shanghai when Jiang Zemin was secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee. During their reign, economic reform became one of China’s greatest achievements in the Jiang Zemin era. Reforms have been implemented in almost all areas of the Chinese economy—reform of state-owned enterprises, deregulation of exchange rates, liberalization of the real estate market, implementation of a tax-sharing system, and entry into the World Trade Organization. China as a whole has taken a big step in the direction of a market economy, and thus opened the two decades of the fastest development in Chinese history.

After securing his position as China’s top leader, Jiang Zemin also began to build his own prestige and authority, trying to follow in the footsteps of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, establishing a personality cult, and ensuring that his position in the party would not be challenged or impacted by others.

After the “June 4th Incident”, some conservative veterans retained important influence in the army. Jiang Zemin has no military background, but with these veterans gradually withdrawing from the stage of history, he gradually took control of the military. He also proposed that military personnel be prohibited from doing business.

He once emphasized that “the absolute leadership of the party over the army is the eternal soul of our army, and we must unswervingly adhere to the fundamental principles and systems of the party leading the people’s army.”

Like his predecessors, he also tried to distill his own theoretical ideas in the ideological field as his political legacy. He further developed the theory of the Communist Party and put forward the “Three Represents” thought, that is, “the Communist Party of China must always represent the development requirements of China’s advanced social productive forces, always represent the direction of China’s advanced culture, and always represent the fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority of the Chinese people.” This was later written into the Constitution of the Communist Party of China and the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China.

Wu Qiang believes that Jiang Zemin’s “Three Represents” thought has not got rid of his technical bureaucratic limitations, and has not made breakthrough sublimation and improvement on the theoretical level, so it is very weak as a political legacy.

At the same time, he also suppressed domestic dissidents and the Falun Gong organization with an iron fist. Taking a tough stance on Taiwan led to the outbreak of the third Taiwan Strait crisis. Critics also believe that he has no intention of promoting the reform of China’s political system, making the CCP continue to move towards autocracy.

Among them, the crackdown on Falun Gong has left a highly controversial record on his human rights record. Falun Gong is a qigong practice method proposed by Li Hongzhi. It rose rapidly in China in the mid-to-late 1990s, attracting tens of millions of people to join the organization and gradually attracting the attention of the CCP. In 1996, the CCP’s propaganda machine “Guangming Daily” called Falun Gong a “feudal superstition”, which aroused dissatisfaction among Falun Gong practitioners across China. They began to demonstrate and protest against institutions critical of Falun Gong from time to time. In April 1999, 10,000 Falun Gong members held a peaceful demonstration in front of Zhongnanhai in Beijing to protest the arrest of several of their leaders. Since then, China has begun to suppress Falun Gong activities on a large scale, labeling Falun Gong as a cult. State media has also described Falun Gong as an organization that spreads falsehoods, misleads the masses, and endangers social stability. But Falun Gong members insist they are a law-abiding peaceful organization that uses meditation and qigong exercises to keep fit.

Falun Gong has a large number of members and penetrates into different levels of Chinese society. It will undoubtedly feel a threat to the CCP regime that just experienced the “Tiananmen” incident ten years ago. The ban on Falun Gong is also very comprehensive, involving every corner of China. From 1999 to 2000, millions of practitioners quit the organization due to the ban, and more than 30,000 Falun Gong practitioners were arrested. The persecution of Falun Gong by the Chinese authorities continues to this day.

Jiang Zemin tried to improve China’s international image after securing a stable domestic position, and he was very happy to use his knowledge and background to attract the attention of the international community.

After the “June 4th Incident”, China faced sanctions and blockades from the Western world headed by the United States, but repairing Sino-US relations is crucial to China’s reform and opening up.

He has repeatedly mentioned the principles of relations with the United States, that is, “increase trust, reduce troubles, develop cooperation, and not engage in confrontation.” During his tenure, he visited the United States many times to promote China’s entry into the World Trade Organization and deepen China’s integration into the world economy process.

During Jiang Zemin’s period, although Sino-US relations experienced several thrilling frictions, they always ended peacefully.

In 1995, when Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui visited the United States, he became the first top Taiwan official to visit the United States since Taiwan and the United States broke off diplomatic relations 17 years ago. In response, the People’s Liberation Army conducted military exercises and launched missiles in the Taiwan Strait for several months, triggering a crisis in the Taiwan Strait. After the United States assigned two aircraft carriers to pass through the Taiwan Strait, the situation stabilized.

In 1999, during the NATO bombing operation led by the United States, five GPS-guided bombs hit the Chinese embassy, ​​killing three people and injuring at least 20. Major Chinese cities such as Beijing and Shanghai then erupted against the United States. Jiang Zemin expressed support for such patriotic demonstrations at a time when China was preparing to join the WTO, but asked cadres at all levels to pay attention to avoiding excessive behavior so that the situation did not get out of control. In the end, no Americans died in the protests, and a compensation agreement between the two sides allowed Beijing to put the matter on hold.

In his series of tours, he impresses people with his strong personal style. For example, during a state visit to the Philippines in 1996, on the yacht of Philippine President Ramos, the two leaders jointly sang Elvis Presley’s song “Love Me Tenderly” and danced to the music.

When he visited the United States, he confidently sang Peking Opera, played the guitar, and “talked and laughed happily” in English with Wallace, an American reporter who had interviewed Deng Xiaoping.

He has also had rare public outbursts. In 2000, Zhang Baohua, a female reporter from Hong Kong Cable TV, asked Jiang Zemin at a press conference about the re-election of Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa, “whether the central government has hand-picked it”, and Jiang angrily reprimanded Zhang Baohua. During the accusation process, Jiang claimed that “as an elder”, “it is necessary to tell you a little life experience”, accusing the Hong Kong reporter of being “too young (too young)” after all, asking questions “too simple, sometimes naive (too simple, sometimes naive)”.

Zhang Baohua recalled to BBC Chinese that the moment he saw his expression, he already knew that he was “really angry”. And she believes that from this point, Jiang Zemin is a leader with “true temperament”. “Leaders generally have to look dignified when facing the camera, but he is very temperamental, that is, what you look like when you lose your temper is what you look like at that time.”

“Compared to previous generations of leaders, Jiang Zemin is very personal. One is because of his own character, and the other is that he is really in power. If you are in power, speak louder,” Zhang Baohua said.

Beginning in 2002, Jiang Zemin began handing over power to his successor, Hu Jintao. He first handed over the post of general secretary of the Communist Party of China to Hu Jintao, who then took over as president in 2003.

In September 2004, Jiang Zemin handed over his last important post, that of chairman of the Central Military Commission, which governs the military.

Since then, he has completely withdrawn from the core political arena and rarely appeared in public. However, the outside world generally believes that even in the Hu Jintao era, Jiang Zemin is still the absolute figure behind the scenes to control China’s political situation.

In the Xi Jinping era, as Xi Jinping’s iron fist and centralization methods continued to strengthen, the aging Jiang Zemin also kept a low profile. But in the online world, he has become a symbol of a new cultural phenomenon – “membrane culture”. His appearance features of thick-edged squares, big eyes, belt above the navel, and big belly were ridiculed by critics as a “toad”, but among Chinese young people, it has caused the phenomenon of “membrane clam”. This group of young people call themselves “clam fans” or “magicians”. They like to repost Jiang Zemin’s classic quotations and use his emoticons.

The 30-year-old “magician” Xiao Zeng was still young when Jiang Zemin was in power, and he didn’t have much memory of him as a leader. However, he told BBC Chinese that the reason why he was interested in Jiang Zemin was not because he was interested in Jiang Zemin. Jiang Zemin’s love is due to his rebellion against China’s status quo. “The image of the leaders in China is too upright and unsmiling. In addition, the cultural atmosphere in China tends to be more conservative, and the previous era of cultural openness and comparison is no longer there.”

He believes that this Internet culture will not disappear after Jiang Zemin’s death. “For a long time in China, there won’t be a second Internet celebrity leader. He is a traffic star just like Trump. But China will no longer have this kind of political figure.”