NEWS

Former President Jiang Zemin’s death comes at the most crucial moment in China since Tiananmen


As if there wasn’t enough instability in China with the protests against the Covid 0 policy, the former president passed away on Wednesday Jiang Zemin. Aged 96 and suffering from leukemia, he died at noon in Shanghai, a victim of multiple organ failure, according to the official press. Because of his advanced age and his absence last month from the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of China, it was already known that he was in a very delicate state of health. In fact, he was last seen in public on October 1, 2019, during the military parade in Beijing for the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

With a reformist and liberal character, Jiang Zemin has been the true architect of China’s economic growth since the 1990s, above all, after its integration into the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, increasing exports from the “world factory”. During his presidency, from 1993 to 2003, Beijing was also awarded the 2008 Olympic Games, which were a symbol of China’s modernization and opening up to the world.

In full demonstrations against the restrictions and confinement of Covid-0, his death comes at the most complex moment in the last decades of the Communist Party’s authoritarian regime. It should not be forgotten that the death of another reformist leader, Hu Yaobang, sparked a popular revolt in 1989 that was forcibly crushed in the Tiananmen massacre. Now we will have to see how the Chinese take his death and how the Xi Jinping regime deals with the popular tributes that might be made, which in 1989 led to criticizing the leaders of the time and calling for more democratic reforms.

See also  Xi Jinping recupera las viejas purgas al estilo de Mao en China

Born in 1926 in Yangzhou, coastal Jiangsu Province, Jiang Zemin rose to power after the military crushing of the Tiananmen protests in 1989. Encouraged by his father as China opened up to capitalism, Deng XiaopingHe served as President of the People’s Republic from 1993 to 2003, when Hu Jintao succeeded him.

During his tenure, the Asian giant underwent a major economic and social transformation, rather than a political one, as it saw the fruits of the reforms that began in the late 1970s after the death of Mao Zedong. Along with the progress and modernization that he breathed into Chinese society, among his political contributions stands out the “theory of triple representation”, with which he opened the Communist Party to the productive forces, that is, to the entrepreneurs who spread in China. . Under the protection of its extraordinary economic growth. With Deng Xiaoping already dead, he profited in 1997 from the return of the former British colony of Hong Kong and opened China to the world by rubbing shoulders with leaders of the stature of Bill Clinton, then US president, or Queen Elizabeth II. England.

Related Articles

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Back to top button