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Jiang Zemin: the story on HearLore | HearLore
Jiang Zemin
Jiang Zemin was born on the 17th of August 1926 in Yangzhou, Jiangsu, into a family that would soon be torn apart by war. His uncle and foster father, Jiang Shangqing, died fighting the Japanese occupation, a sacrifice that cast a long shadow over Jiang's early life and shaped his sense of national duty. Growing up in Japanese-occupied Nanjing, Jiang studied electrical engineering at the National Central University before transferring to the National Chiao Tung University, graduating in 1947. He joined the Chinese Communist Party while still a student, marking the beginning of a career that would pivot from technical expertise to the highest echelons of political power. After the establishment of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Jiang received specialized training at the Stalin Automobile Works in Moscow during the 1950s, a period that grounded him in the industrial ambitions of the new state. His early career was defined by a shift from the technical side of engineering to administrative and political tasks, a transition that would eventually lead him to the heart of China's decision-making machinery. By 1962, he had returned to Shanghai to serve in various institutes, and between 1970 and 1972, he was sent to Romania as part of an expert team to establish machinery manufacturing plants, a mission that honed his diplomatic and organizational skills in a foreign land.
The Compromise Candidate of 1989
Urged by Deng Xiaoping's southern tour in 1992, Jiang officially introduced the term socialist market economy in his speech during the 14th CCP National Congress held later that year, which accelerated reform and opening up. This was a huge step to take in the realization of Deng's socialism with Chinese characteristics, moving China's centrally-planned socialist economy into essentially a government-regulated market economy. Jiang's administration oversaw the breaking of the iron rice bowl, started several key infrastructure projects, and privatized many state-owned enterprises. In the process, as many as 40 million jobs were removed from state-owned enterprises in a process widely known as Xiagang, or to get down from the post. Unemployment rates skyrocketed, rising as high as 40% in some urban areas, and stock markets fluctuated greatly. The scale of rural migration into urban areas was unprecedented anywhere, and little was being done to address an ever-increasing urban-rural wealth gap. Official reports put the figure on the percentage of China's GDP being moved and abused by corrupt officials at 10%. Jiang's biggest aim in the economy was stability, and he believed that a stable government with highly centralized power would be a prerequisite, choosing to postpone political reform, which in many facets of governance exacerbated the ongoing problems. After the coastal regions and SEZs were sufficiently developed, Jiang worked to reduce geographic disparities by encouraging richer cities to provide financial, technological, and managerial assistance to the poorer, western ones. He put forward the plan for China's western development, and construction of various infrastructure projects such as the Qinghai-Tibet railway and the Three Gorges Dam began under Jiang's leadership. Jiang launched the Going Global policy in 1999, a national strategy which sought to develop national champion firms, increase foreign demand for
Jiang Zemin was born on the 17th of August 1926 in Yangzhou, Jiangsu, and died on the 30th of November 2022 in Shanghai. He passed away at the age of 96 from leukemia and multiple organ failures.
What major economic policies did Jiang Zemin implement during his leadership?
Jiang Zemin introduced the socialist market economy in 1992 and launched the Going Global policy in 1999 to expand Chinese investment abroad. His administration oversaw the privatization of state-owned enterprises and facilitated China's entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001.
When did Jiang Zemin officially step down from his final political post?
Jiang Zemin relinquished his post as chairman of the Central Military Commission on the 19th of September 2004 and resigned his last significant state post in March 2005. His political career effectively ended in 2005 after he gave up all official titles.
What was the Three Represents theory and when was it added to the Party constitution?
The Three Represents theory was introduced by Jiang Zemin on the 25th of February 2000 to justify incorporating the capitalist business class into the Communist Party. It was written into the Party constitution at the 16th CCP Congress in 2002 alongside Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought.
How did Jiang Zemin handle the Falun Gong movement and internet regulation?
Jiang Zemin established the 610 Office on the 21st of September 1992 to crack down on Falun Gong and ordered the arrest of thousands of organizers on the 20th of July 1999. He also oversaw the implementation of the Great Firewall in 1998 to maintain strict government control over the internet.
What were the key foreign policy achievements of Jiang Zemin's administration?
Jiang Zemin signed border agreements with Russia in 1991 and 1999 and helped establish the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation in 2001. His foreign policy prioritized stability and cooperation, leading to China's entry into the World Trade Organization and the successful bid to host the 2008 Summer Olympics.
Chinese goods and services, and secure energy and resources. This policy greatly expanded Chinese investment and influence in the global South, particularly in Africa and Asia.
After Jiang Zemin took over as Chairman of the Central Military Commission, he faced several crises that would test his resolve and reshape the People's Liberation Army. The military leaders Yang Shangkun and Yang Baibing initially marginalized Jiang Zemin, but after Jiang won the support of Deng Xiaoping, they gradually lost military power. The Third Taiwan Strait Crisis prompted Jiang Zemin to reflect on the mistakes of the People's Liberation Army and led him to begin building up military power, purchasing Russian naval and air force weapons, while forbidding the military engaging in business, as well as easing problems with low morale and the near collapse of the military industry. In 1997, Jiang Zemin proposed the three-step development strategy for modernizing national defense and armed forces, aligning with China's national modernization goals. China's military expenditure also began to increase rapidly from 1999. During his tenure, Jiang ordered a strict investigation into the issue of espionage leaks to the People's Liberation Army, dealing with several major espionage leaks, of which the Liu Guangzhi and Liu Liankun cases were the most notable. The Liu Guangzhi case was called the largest espionage case since the founding of the People's Republic of China, and the leaked PLA secrets would affect the cross-strait air control competition over the Taiwan Strait and would have adverse consequences on the PLA's combat effectiveness. The Liu Liankun case was directly involved in the leak of information about the PLA's military exercises during the 1996 presidential election and the Taiwan Strait missile crisis. On the 21st of September 1992, the Politburo Standing Committee chaired by Jiang Zemin formally approved the largest space project in the history of the People's Republic of China: the China Manned Space Program. During the implementation
The Military Modernizer and Space Pioneer
of the project, he visited Beijing Aerospace City, Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, and other places many times to inspect and meet with scientific and technological personnel who participated in the development. He also watched the launch of the Shenzhou III manned test spacecraft on site. After more than ten years of development, China became the third country in the world to master independent manned space capabilities after the Soviet Union/Russia and the United States in 2003.
In June 1999, Jiang established an extralegal department, the 610 Office, to crack down on Falun Gong, a popular new religious movement that he believed was quietly infiltrating the CCP and state apparatus. On the 20th of July, security forces arrested thousands of Falun Gong organizers they identified as leaders. The persecution that followed was characterized as a nationwide campaign of propaganda, as well as the large-scale arbitrary imprisonment and coercive reeducation of Falun Gong organizers, sometimes resulting in death due to mistreatment in detention. Under Jiang's leadership, China established its first controls over the Internet, when in 1996 Premier Li Peng signed a State Council Order issuing the Temporary Regulations Governing Computer Information Networks and the Internet. The regulations stated that all direct connections to the internet must be channeled through international ports established and maintained by the Ministry of Post and Telecommunications, saying that no group or individual may establish or use any other means to gain internet access. In 1998, the Chinese government started a project to maintain tighter control over the internet in what became known as the Great Firewall. Jiang Zemin's background in science and engineering prompted him to focus on the development of science and education during his time in office. During his tenure, Jiang proposed the revitalize the country through science and education strategy. In December 1989, Jiang Zemin pointed out the impact of scientific and technological progress on the development of social productivity at the National Science and Technology Awards Conference, and insisted on giving priority to the development of science and technology. In October 1992, he proposed establishing the strategic position of giving priority to the development of science and education at the 14th CCP National Congress and in 1996, he
The Crackdown on Falun Gong and Internet Control
formed the strategy of rejuvenating the country through science and education. In the following years, the State Council launched the Knowledge Innovation Project, the Technology Innovation Project, Project 211, and Project 985.
Under Jiang's leadership, China continued its style of developmental diplomacy which had been adopted under Deng Xiaoping, with China's international behavior generally being both pragmatic and predictable. During Jiang's presidency, serious flare-ups between China and the United States occurred, yet Jiang's foreign policy was for the most part passive and non-confrontational. Foreign policy under Jiang inherited from that of Deng Xiaoping, that is, hide your strength, bide your time, which emphasized the use of cooperative rhetoric and the avoidance of controversy. Jiang oversaw the deepening of China's relations with Russia, signing the Agreement between the People's Republic of China and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Eastern Section of the Sino-Soviet Border with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, and signed the Memorandum of Understanding between the Chinese and Russian Governments on the Mutual Reduction of Armed Forces in Border Areas and Strengthening of Military Trust with Russian president Boris Yeltsin. In 1991, Jiang signed the Agreement between the People's Republic of China and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Eastern Section of the Sino-Soviet Border with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, and signed the Memorandum of Understanding between the Chinese and Russian Governments on the Mutual Reduction of Armed Forces in Border Areas and Strengthening of Military Trust with Russian president Boris Yeltsin. On the 23rd of December 1992, Yeltsin made his first official visit to China, where he met with Jiang Zemin and Chinese president Yang Shangkun. During the 1990s, cooperation between China and Russia was facilitated by the two countries' mutual desires to balance the influence of the United States and establish a multi-polar international system. Jiang also started to meet regularly with Russian president Boris Yeltsin, who visited Beijing in November 1997, while Jiang visited
The Pragmatist in Foreign Affairs
Moscow in 1998. Relations were further strengthened by the joint opposition to the NATO intervention in Yugoslavia. In December 1999, during his visit to China, Yeltsin signed the Protocol on the Demarcation of the Eastern and Western Sections of the Sino-Russian Border with Jiang Zemin. In 2001, the two countries established the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation together with Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. A month later, the close relations between the two countries were formalized with the Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation, a twenty-year strategic and economic treaty.
On the 25th of February 2000, Jiang introduced the theory of Three Represents, which was later enshrined in both Party and State constitutions as an important thought, following in the footsteps of Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory. Officially termed as the latest development of socialism with Chinese characters under Jiang's tenure, the Three Represents justified the incorporation of the new capitalist business class into the party, and changed the founding ideology of the CCP from protecting the interests of the peasantry and workers to that of the overwhelming majority of the people, a euphemism aimed at placating the growing entrepreneurial class. Conservative critics within the party, such as hardline leftist Deng Liqun, denounced this as betrayal of true communist ideology. Before he transferred power to a younger generation of leaders, Jiang had his theory of Three Represents written into the Party's constitution, alongside Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, and Deng Xiaoping Theory at the 16th CCP Congress in 2002. In the run-up to the 16th National Congress of the CCP, Hu Jintao had almost unanimous support to become the new CCP general secretary. To maintain China's image as a stable and respected country, Jiang and Hu emphasized their unity, striving to make this transition the first smooth and harmonious one in the PRC's history. Jiang stepped down as general secretary and left the Politburo Standing Committee, but retained the chairmanship of the Central Military Commission, which controlled the army and the nation's foreign policy. Jiang would continue counselling Hu from behind the curtain, and it was formally agreed that Jiang would be consulted on all matters of state importance. Both men also reached a tacit understanding that Hu would not be considered a core leader like Jiang, Deng
The Three Represents and Political Transition
and Mao. At the Congress, the majority of new members for Standing Committee were considered part of Jiang's so-called Shanghai clique, the most prominent being vice president Zeng Qinghong, who had served as Jiang's chief of staff for many years, and vice premier Huang Ju, a former party secretary of Shanghai. After Hu succeeded Jiang as general secretary, the latter continued to dominate public life for several years. The South China Morning Post announced that a new era has begun in China. But it is not that of Vice President Hu Jintao. Rather, it is a new era of President Jiang Zemin, who has just stepped down as the Party's general secretary. Early in the 2003 SARS crisis, Jiang remained conspicuously silent, and observers were divided over whether it signified his waning influence, or respect for Hu. It has been argued that the institutional arrangements created by the 16th Congress left Jiang in a position where he could not exercise much influence. Although Jiang retained the chairmanship of the CMC, most members of the commission were professional military men. People's Liberation Army Daily, a publication thought to represent the views of the CMC majority, printed an article on the 11th of March 2003 which quotes two army delegates as saying, Having one center is called loyalty, while having two centers will result in problems. This was interpreted as a criticism of Jiang's attempt to exercise dual leadership with Hu on the model of Deng Xiaoping. On the 19th of September 2004, after the 4th Plenary Session of the 16th Central Committee, Jiang, at the age of 78, relinquished his post as chairman of the party's Central Military Commission, his last post in the party. Six months later in March 2005, Jiang resigned his last significant post, chairman of the Central Military Commission of the state, which marked the end of Jiang's political career. This followed weeks of speculation that forces inside the party were pressing Jiang to step aside. Jiang's term was supposed to have lasted until 2007. Hu also succeeded Jiang as the CMC chairman, but, in an apparent political defeat for Jiang, General Xu Caihou, and not Zeng Qinghong was appointed to succeed Hu as vice chairman, as was initially speculated. This power transition formally marked the end of Jiang's era in China, which roughly lasted from 1989 to 2004.
Jiang continued to make official appearances after giving up his last title in 2005. In China's strictly defined protocol sequence, Jiang's name always appeared immediately after Hu Jintao's and in front of the remaining sitting members of the CCP Politburo Standing Committee. In 2007, Jiang was seen with Hu Jintao on stage at a ceremony celebrating the 80th anniversary of the founding of the People's Liberation Army, and toured the Military Museum of the Chinese People's Revolution with Li Peng, Zhu Rongji, and other former senior officials. In 2008, Jiang published an academic article on China's clean energy resources and another on China's information technology development titled Reflections on Energy Issues in China. On the 8th of August 2008, Jiang appeared at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics. He also stood beside Hu Jintao during the mass parade celebrating the 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China in October 2009. Beginning in July 2011, false reports of Jiang's death began circulating on the news media outside of mainland China and on the internet. While Jiang may indeed have been ill and receiving treatment, the rumors were denied by official sources. On the 9th of October 2011, Jiang made his first public appearance since his premature obituary in Beijing at a celebration to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Xinhai Revolution. Jiang reappeared at the 18th Party Congress in October 2012, and took part in the 65th Anniversary banquet of the founding of the People's Republic of China in October 2014. At the banquet he sat next to Xi Jinping, who had then succeeded Hu Jintao as CCP general secretary. In September 2015, Jiang attended the parade celebrating 70 years since end of World War II; there, Jiang again
The Final Years and Enduring Legacy
sat next to Xi Jinping and Hu Jintao. He appeared on the 29th of May 2017 at Shanghai Technology University. After Xi Jinping assumed power in 2012, Jiang's position in the protocol sequence of leaders retreated; while he was often seated next to Xi Jinping at official events, his name was often reported after all standing members of the Communist Party's Politburo. Jiang reappeared at the 19th Party Congress on the 18th of October 2017. He appeared on the 29th of July 2019 at the funeral of former premier Li Peng. He also attended the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China mass parade in October 2019, marking his last public appearance prior to his death. He did not attend the 20th Party Congress in October 2022. Jiang died on the 30th of November 2022, at the age of 96, in Shanghai. According to the Chinese state media Xinhua News Agency, he died at 12:13 pm from leukemia and multiple organ failures. On the day of Jiang's death, the government released a notice that the national flags would be flown half-staff in key locations of Beijing and diplomatic missions abroad. Foreigners were not invited to attend official mourning activities. Jiang's body was cremated at Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery and his ashes were scattered near the mouth of the Yangtze River. The policies of his successors, Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, have widely been seen as efforts to address perceived imbalances and move away from a sole focus on economic growth toward a broader view of development which incorporates non-economic factors such as health and the environment. Domestically, Jiang's legacy and reputation is mixed. While some people attributed the period of relative stability and growth in the 1990s to Jiang's term, others argue that Jiang did little to correct systemic imbalance and an accumulation of problems which resulted from years of breakneck-pace economic reforms, leaving the next administration facing innumerable challenges, some of which may have been too late to solve. The fact that Jiang rose to power as the direct beneficiary of the political aftermath of Tiananmen has shaped the perception of his rule. Following the Tiananmen protests, Jiang threw his support behind elder Chen Yun's conservative economic policies, but subsequently changed his allegiance to Deng Xiaoping's reform-oriented agenda following the latter's Southern Tour. This shift was not only seen as the exercise of a political opportunist, it also sowed confusion among party loyalists in regards to what direction the party was headed or what the party truly believed in. While continued economic reforms resulted in an explosion of wealth around the country, it also led to the formation of special interest groups in many sectors of the economy, and the exercise of state power without any meaningful oversight. This opened the way for the sub-optimal distribution of the fruits of growth, and an expanding culture of corruption among bureaucrats and party officials. Historian and former Xinhua journalist Yang Jisheng wrote that Jiang might well have been given a positive historical assessment had it not been for his decision to overstay his welcome by remaining in the Central Military Commission post after Hu had formally assumed the party leadership. Moreover, Jiang took credit for all the gains made during the 13 years between 1989 and 2002, which not only evoked the memories of Jiang being a beneficiary of Tiananmen, but also neglected the economic foundations laid by Deng, whose authority was still paramount until the mid-1990s. Additionally, Jiang was also criticized for his insistence on writing the Three Represents into the party and state constitutions, which Yang called Jiang's attempt at self-deification, i.e., that he saw himself as a visionary along the same lines as Deng and Mao. Yang contended, The Three Represents is just common sense. It is not a proper theoretical framework. It's what any ruler would tell the people to justify the continued rule of the governing party. Jiang did not specialize in economics, and in 1997 handed most of the economic governance of the country to premier Zhu Rongji and remained in office through the Asian financial crisis. Under their joint leadership, Mainland China sustained an average of 8% GDP growth annually, achieving the highest rate of per capita economic growth in major world economies, raising eyebrows around the world with its astonishing speed. This was mostly achieved by continuing the process of a transition to a market economy. Additionally, he helped increase China's international standing with China joining the World Trade Organization in 2001 and Beijing winning the bid to host the 2008 Summer Olympics. Some have also associated Jiang with the widespread corruption and cronyism that had become a notable feature of the Communist power apparatus since Jiang's years in power. In the military, the two vice-chairmen who sat atop the Central Military Commission hierarchy - nominally as assistants to then chairman Hu Jintao - Vice Chairmen Xu Caihou and Guo Boxiong, were said to have obstructed Hu Jintao's exercise of power in the military. Xu and Guo were characterized as Jiang's proxies in the military. Eventually, both men were reported to have taken massive bribes, and both fell under the axe of the anti-corruption campaign under Xi Jinping. At the same time, many biographers of Jiang have noted his government resembled an oligarchy as opposed to an autocratic dictatorship. Many of the policies of his era had been attributed to others in government, notably premier Zhu Rongji. Jiang was also characterized as a leader who was mindful to seek the opinion of his close advisers. Jiang is often credited with the improvement in foreign relations during his term, but at the same time many Chinese have criticized him for being too conciliatory towards the United States and Russia. The issue of Chinese unification between the mainland and Taiwan gained ground during Jiang's term.