Chinese President Jiang Zemin during a meeting with corporate executives in Hong Kong on May 8, 2001.
(CNN) --
Jiang Zemin, the Chinese communist leader who paved the way for the country's rise as a global superpower, has died, the state news agency Xinhua announced Wednesday.
He was 96 years old.
The former head of the ruling Communist Party and state president died on Wednesday of leukemia and associated multi-organ failure in Shanghai.
He is survived by his wife, two children and two grandchildren.
After being shunned by the West after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989, China, with Jiang as its top leader, successfully reintegrated into the international community by regaining sovereignty over Hong Kong, winning the bid to host the Olympic Games 2008 in Beijing and, perhaps most importantly, joining the World Trade Organization.
