This reformist and liberal leader who ruled from 1993 to 2003 died at the age of 96 during full protests against Covid zero and was the true architect of the country’s economic growth thanks to its integration into the World Trade Organization (WTO).
As if there wasn’t enough instability in China with the protests against the Covid zero policy, former president Jiang Zemin passed away on Wednesday. According to the official press, he died at the age of 96 and sick with leukemia in Shanghai from a multiple failure of his organs. Due to his advanced age and his absence last month from the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of China, he was already known to be in very poor health. He was last seen in public on October 1, 2019, during the parade in Beijing marking the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
With a reformist and liberal character, Jiang Zemin has been the real architect of China’s economic growth since the 1990s and especially after its integration into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, which boosted exports from the factory global. During his term as president, from 1993 to 2003, Beijing also hosted the 2008 Olympic Games, which symbolized China’s modernization and opening up to the world.
Amid full-blown demonstrations against Covid zero restrictions and confinement, his death comes at the most complicated moment for the Communist Party’s authoritarian regime in recent decades. It should not be forgotten that the death of another reformist leader, Hu Yaobang, sparked the popular uprising in 1989, which was violently crushed in the Tiananmen Square massacre. Now we will have to see how the Chinese take his death and how Xi Jinping’s regime handles the popular tributes that may be held, which in 1989 served to criticize the leaders of the time and call for more democratic reforms.
Born in 1926 in Yangzhou, Jiangsu coastal province, Jiang Zemin rose to power after the military suppression of the Tiananmen protests in 1989. Buoyed by the father of China’s opening to capitalism, Deng Xiaoping, he served as president of the People’s Republic from 1993 to 2003, when he was succeeded by Hu Jintao.
During his tenure, the Asian giant underwent a major economic and social transformation, not a political one, given the fruits of the reforms launched in the late 1970s after the death of Mao Zedong. In addition to the progress and modernization he breathed into Chinese society, his political contributions included the “triple representation theory,” opening the Communist Party to the productive forces, that is, to the businessmen who had proliferated in China. protection of its extraordinary economic growth. With Deng Xiaoping already dead, in 1997 he took advantage of the return of the former British colony of Hong Kong and opened China to the world by rubbing shoulders with leaders the stature of Bill Clinton, then president of the United States, or Queen Elizabeth II. from England.
Source: La Verdad
I am an experienced and passionate journalist with a strong track record in news website reporting. I specialize in technology coverage, breaking stories on the latest developments and trends from around the world. Working for Today Times Live has given me the opportunity to write thought-provoking pieces that have caught the attention of many readers.
