Jiang Zemin, president of the People’s Republic of China between 1993 and 2003, died at the age of 96 in Shanghai, according to Chinese official media. The Chinese giant thus loses a key figure in the great national economic boom of the 1990s, which took place just after the controversy aroused by the massacre in Tiananmen Square, which occurred after the demonstrations organized in 1989 in this district of Beijing by Chinese students. who denounced the prevailing corruption and oppression and who resented the sweeping economic reforms that led to high inflation and rising unemployment. These protests have resulted in a brutal crackdown by Chinese authorities, which has claimed hundreds of lives, according to various estimates.
Chinese leaders have ordered numerous arrests those responsible for the protests, expelled the foreign press from the country and strictly controlled national press coverage of the events. All of this has drawn strong international condemnation of the Chinese government’s actions.
After this dark episode, Jiang Zemin has become a key figure in post-Tiananmen China, and a key player in China’s strong economic growth in the 1990s. However, dark episodes continued to mark his career, such as the persistence of social inequalities that increased following economic reforms, repression in the region of Tibet and the fight against the organization Falun Gong, described as sectarian by the Chinese authorities.
Tibet enjoyed de facto independence for nearly 40 years, but the rise to power of communism in China in 1949 put an end to that period. in the Himalayan region. More than 70 years ago, thousands of troops sent by leader Mao Zedong entered Tibet, rounded up his authorities, and finally captured the border town of Chamdo on October 19. Under pressure from China, the Dalai Lama signed the controversial 17-point agreement after eight months of occupation by the Chinese military, a document that formalized the annexation of the territory.
The entity Falun Gong, on the other hand, is an ancient Chinese spiritual practice related to meditation, which was initially widely accepted. However, from the 1990s, the persecutions started from the Chinese Communist Party, who considered the organization a danger because of the size it had taken, its independence from power and the spiritual teachings it dispensed, which did not fit with the ideological precepts projected by the government Chinese.
It is in this context that Jiang Zemin, born in Yangzhou in 1926, became general secretary of the Communist Party in 1989, in a difficult period marked by international criticism and social protests, marking a turning point which was above all characterized by the country’s economic growth. Zemin joined the Chinese Communist Party at a very young age and trained as an engineer in Shanghai, which led him to develop his professional career in China and Moscow in the automotive sector. It was in Moscow that he came into close contact with officials of the former Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
Jiang Zemin’s personality was important because he offered a friendlier and more accommodating face, especially to the outside world, becoming very popular and dramatically changing China’s image. His political stance was less aggressive than that of another of his successors, current President Xi Jinping, who pursued more expansionist and threatening policies, especially in the Indo-Pacific region.
Zemin had a pragmatic and moderate character who helped him in his political dealings and was considered affable by other international leaders. He even became famous with anecdotes where he sang, danced and joked at public events with other political leaders, which is a far cry from the more serious and cold images offered by Chinese Communist leaders during the story.
It was in Shanghai that he developed an important political career, becoming mayor and general secretary of the Communist Party of this city. He succeeded in becoming president of the People’s Republic of China in 1993, after the events of Tiananmen, due to the purge carried out within the Communist Party to eliminate those who had tried to sympathize with the protesters opposed to the policies of the regime. In this scenario, Deng Xiaoping, who wielded de facto power, and other veterans of communist power chose Jiang Zemin as his successor so as not to fall into open reformism like that of Mikhail Gorbachev in the USSR, but to pursue liberalism economy that would allow the country to take off financially. His election was also influenced by his success in suppressing and dispersing protests in Shanghai short of the violence unleashed by police and military in Beijing in 1989.
Thereby, in June 1989, he became general secretary of the Communist Party, replacing Zhao Ziyang, purged, then president of China in 1993, succeeding Deng Xiaoping as absolute leader of China.
Considered in the early years as a transitional leader subordinate to Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin developed his own image as a statesman and established himself as a national political leader. Once president, he established an extensive network of influence that reached into the economic and even military establishment.
His tenure was mainly marked by the national economic boom which led the nation to an annual growth rate of around 10%, which enabled China to enter the World Trade Organization in 2001. All this represented by a politico-economic model marked by the rule of the Chinese Communist Party, linked to an economic liberalism far from orthodoxy which has failed in other nations of the Communist orbit. A system that has lifted the country economically, but has widened social inequalities between rich and poor and sparked criticism for alleged corruption and embezzlement.
In 2003, Jiang Zemin was replaced by Hu Jintao, who would have been removed from his post after the last congress of the Chinese Communist Party, which this year definitively enthroned current President Xi Jinping. endowed with full powers, who has always spoken out against corruption within the party and who also wanted to break with all traces of the past and remove collaborators linked to Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao himself.
It is therefore a farewell to Jiang Zemin, who took the reins of a China marked by protests and international criticism to transform it into a world economic power. and a country with a more welcoming face, which was even able to organize the Olympic Games in 2008.
Jiang Zemin, flag bearer of China’s period of strong economic growth, dies