China's ex-president Jiang Zemin died at the age of 96 - one of the last critics of head of state Xi Jinping

Created: 11/30/2022, 2:49 p.m

By: Christiane Kuehl

Opening up to other countries in difficult times: the late ex-president Jiang Zemin with the then Chancellor Gerhard Schröder in Beijing © Frederic Brown/afp

China's ex-president Jiang Zemin has died at the age of 96.

He took over the country after the Tiananmen Square bloodbath in 1989 and brought it back to the world.

Many people mourn.

Beijing/Munich – In the summer of 1989, the Shanghai party leader Jiang Zemin was flown from his port city to Beijing in a cloak-and-dagger operation to become General Secretary of the Communist Party.

A party that had just killed hundreds of demonstrators in the heart of the capital.

The world turned away in horror.

But only twelve years later, Jiang China led the World Trade Organization WTO and, with China's rich self-made entrepreneurs, allowed the former "class enemy" into the party.

The return of the British crown colony of Hong Kong to China also fell during his term of office – as did the bid for the 2001 Summer Olympics in Beijing seven years later.

Jiang Zemin internationalized the country at breakneck speed, despite the stain left by the massacre of the pro-democracy movement;

he focused on growth and loosened the reins on the economy.

The world began to rely on economic cooperation with the giant country, the bloodbath disappeared from daily politics.

Jiang was soon receiving world leaders;

among other things, he met the then Federal Chancellors Helmut Kohl and Gerhard Schröder several times.

The Chinese were encouraged to learn foreign languages, especially English.

Many studied abroad.

However, like most CP leaders, Jiang remained adamant about the party's claim to power.

Political reforms or more freedom of opinion and freedom of the press were taboo for him: “China's political system must never be shaken.

On Tuesday, Jiang Zemin - party leader from 1989 to 2002 and president from 1993 to 2003 - died at the age of 96.

He is said to have tried to pull the strings behind the scenes until the very end, but his influence has waned as the current strongman Xi Jinping, who has been in office since 2012, has risen to power.

Xi, it seems at the moment, is turning back many of the things that Jiang and his Prime Minister Zhu Rongji had initiated at the turn of the millennium: great freedom for private companies, closure of ailing state-owned companies, greater individual freedoms - for example in choosing a career or getting married, which Mao era still had the party awake.

Today, the CP under Xi is trying to regain more influence over companies and people's lives.

Where this will lead is uncertain.

China's ex-president Jiang Zemin dies after a long illness

Rumors of Jiang's imminent death have been circulating for months, most recently last week.

Jiang did not show up at the October Communist Party Congress.

He was last seen in public at a military parade in October 2019. Since then he has lived in seclusion in Shanghai.

The website of the official Xinhua news agency appeared on Wednesday in black and white, with the death message emblazoned in large black characters as a lead, without a picture.

"Comrade Jiang Zemin" died as a result of leukemia and multiple organ failure, it said.

All rescue attempts failed.

Xinhua hailed the deceased as an "outstanding leader of great prestige."

And that despite the fact that neither Jiang nor his successor Hu Jintao were seen as patrons of today's state and party leader Xi Jinping.

The distance should be mutual.

Among other things, with the help of his anti-corruption campaign, Xi ousted several high-ranking politicians from the ex-president's network into the party and military, many of whom certainly had dirt on them.

With the campaign, Xi also resisted opposition within the party to his rise to power.

criticized

unspecified "retired leaders" who clung to power and continued to interfere - which was taken as a message to Jiang Zemin.

It became quiet around him.

The form of his funeral should show in a few days what status Jiang still enjoys in today's China.

Jiang Zemin's CV

Born on August 17, 1926 in the Yangtze River city of Yangzhou, Jiang Zemin had risen step by step through state companies, ministerial offices and provincial posts.

Among other things, at the beginning of his career he was factory director of the state-owned company First Automobile Works (FAW), today a joint venture partner of Volkswagen.

In 1985, Jiang became mayor of Shanghai, and two years later became the metropolitan party chief, which is the higher of the two offices.

Then came the crucial night.

After the bloody crackdown on the pro-democracy movement on June 4, 1989 and the overthrow of pro-reformist party leader Zhao Ziyang, Patriarch Deng Xiaoping—then the senior elder statesman who was pulling the strings—was looking for an unencumbered compromise candidate for the top job.

Jiang seemed ideal: he had supported martial law during the May 1989 riots but opposed violence.

He broke up student protests in Shanghai without bloodshed.

In official tribute to Jiang on Tuesday, Xinhua spoke vaguely of the "serious political turmoil" of the late 1980s and early 1990s in China and around the world.

At this "historic crossroads," Jiang Zemin led the Party, the military and the people,

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Jiang: What kind of guy was he

Jiang Zemin was not a democrat, he only initiated a few internal party reforms for the selection of cadres.

But he stuck to Patriarch Deng's premise that heads of state and party leaders must step down after two terms.

It is true that he too was 76 years old when he withdrew at the party congress in November 2002.

But his successor, Hu Jintao, had already been in place for five years.

Meanwhile, there is no sign of a successor to Xi Jinping.

The history of the People's Republic of China from 1949 to the present

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At his last party congress as leader, Jiang also managed to bring his favorites into office and anchor his political theories in the party charter.

Six of the then nine members of the highest power body, the Politburo Standing Committee, belonged to Jiang's Shanghai faction, which he had built up over the years.

His theory of the "Three Represents" opened the party to broader strata of society, which included the so-called "advanced productive forces": party slang for private entrepreneurs.

For a Communist Party, that was a paradigm shift.

"Jiang is at the peak of his power," said Hong Kong political scientist Jean-Pierre Cabestan at the time.

Jiang Zemin: Limelight enthusiast and mastermind

Successor Hu Jintao had to live with the senior's meddling -- and mitigate the negative consequences of his successful "economy-growth-first" policy.

The gap between rich and poor had widened, and the social system was underdeveloped.

Both became the focus of the Hu era.

The vanity-leaning Jiang always enjoyed the limelight, publicly quoted traditional Chinese poems or tried to impress foreign guests of state with his extensive knowledge of Goethe or Shakespeare.

At the age of 71, he made headlines playing the ukulele and trying out his Peking Opera singing skills in Hawaii in 1997 during a state visit to the United States.

He was "in a way the first modern president of China," wrote Willy Lam, author of a biography of the politician.

Jiang Zemin with a ukulele in Hawaii: the late ex-president of China loved the show and the limelight © George F. Lee/afp

In the bleak times of zero-Covid, growing repression and economic difficulties, Jiang, who has been a kind of cult figure among young people for years, is glorified.

Memes are circulating online showing Jiang yawning, grinning or wagging his fingers in anger.

A video of Jiang happily conducting a band is also circulating.

Many see Jiang as a symbol of better times, says a manager in Beijing.

Hundreds of thousands expressed their condolences on the website of the state broadcaster CCTV or in the online service Weibo.

The censors immediately deleted individual hidden attacks against Xi Jinping: For example, posts alluding to Xi and his forbidden nickname: "...can you remove Winnie the Pooh?" Users shared videos with links to the song "Shame it Wasn't You". (What a pity it wasn't you) in reference to Xi.