During his years as China’s leader, Jiang Zemin was often sneered at. Although he oversaw an enormous economic boom and brought China out of diplomatic isolation, he seemed to postpone many problems. He was merely tending the store, critics said, like a technocrat. But as the years passed and China’s authoritarianism hardened, the verdict softened: Compared to the current Chinese leadership, Jiang seemed an enlightened autocrat.
Chinese state media reported on Wednesday the death of Jiang Zemin, aged 96, from leukemia. The former party leader and president had been out of influence for years, but his death – like the inglorious retreat of his successor Hu Jintao during the Party Congress – symbolizes the end of an era in China. An era of pragmatism and rapprochement with the West. And an era that more and more Chinese people look back on with fondness.
own ideology
Jiang ruled China from 1989 to 2002, a time marked by economic openness but also political rigidity. After the Tiananmen massacre, political reforms were reversed, and dissidents and critics were relentlessly persecuted. At the same time, Jiang privatized the Chinese economy, which tripled in value under his leadership. He developed his own ideology, whereby private entrepreneurs could become members of the Chinese Communist Party.
In June 1989, Jiang unexpectedly came to power in China after the bloody suppressed student uprising in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Student-sympathetic party leader Zhao Ziyang was ousted, Beijing’s leadership was stained by carnage, and Jiang was brought in from Shanghai as a relatively unknown and undisputed apparatchik. He was seen as a transitional figure, but managed to maintain himself as a leader.
“The Man Who Changed China,” as the title of his authorized biography reads, was born in 1926 into a wealthy family in Jiangsu province. He studied at an American missionary school, received an engineering degree and was sent to a car factory in Moscow for a year. He retained an extensive knowledge of languages that he gladly displayed. Like many party officials, he made his career in government by keeping a low profile.
Weather vane
After the Cultural Revolution, Jiang was sent to Shanghai, where he emerged as an economic reformer. He continued that line as party leader: he oversaw China’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001 and attracted foreign investment. In that context, he strengthened ties with the United States. Thanks to good diplomatic relations, two serious military incidents in 1999 and 2001 were resolved relatively painlessly.
Under Jiang, China experienced an enormous economic boom, but also major social problems arose. Inequality increased and corruption was rampant. Politically, Jiang initially seemed like a reformer, until the wind shifted in Beijing and he took a hard line. He fired a liberal editor-in-chief he had previously defended and cracked down on the Falun Gong religious movement. It earned Jiang a reputation for being a wind vane.
Western governments responded positively to Jiang’s economic openness, brushing aside their outrage over the Tiananmen massacre and other suppressed dissidents. The Chinese president also charmed with his jovial personality. During state visits he liked to give a demonstration on the piano or ukulele, quote poems or sing Oh Sole Mio or Love Me Tender. He danced a waltz with the French first lady, and even a chachacha.
Positive image
In 1998, he and US President Bill Clinton gave a press conference in Beijing, with unprepared questions about human rights, Tibet or the Tiananmen massacre. The press conference was broadcast live on Chinese state media. That was unseen in China and has not been seen since Jiang. In 2000 he gave an extensive interview to the American channel CBS, in which he quoted the opening lines of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address.
“Watching his performance in the Great Hall, I wondered if in the figure of Jiang a more sophisticated China was emerging from the ruins of Mao’s revolution,” noted American China scholar Orville Schell wrote in 1999, after the press conference with Bill Clinton. “Jiang seemed to be diligently trying to reinvent himself as a more cosmopolitan leader, less constrained by party dogma and protocol, and more at ease with the West.”
In the end, Jiang’s openness turned out to be mostly words. But compared to the current Chinese leadership, he advocated soft authoritarianism, with some freedom of expression. On his 90th birthday in 2016, four years after Xi Jinping took office, Chinese social media even sparked a campaign by Jiang worshipers who said they wanted to return to his era. The campaign was censored, but retroactively gave Jiang a more positive image.
3 X JIANG
Just as Xi Jinping resembles Winnie the Pooh according to Chinese internet users, Jiang Zemin becomes a frog compared. Images of frogs were censored in China for a time when they were used to express nostalgia for Jiang.
In 2000, Jiang scolded a Hong Kong journalist ‘too simple, sometimes naive’ to be. The statement has become a common expression in China – including in GIFs and memes – for someone who is too naively attached to Western values.
Jiang was one handy zipper puller, needed to make a career in China. As minister responsible for the electronics industry, he donated the first color television to party boss Chen Yun. He single-handedly installed it in Chen’s living room.