Breaking news: Former Chinese president Jiang Zemin has died at 96. He came to power after the 1989 crackdown on student protests in Tianamen Square, overseeing a period of massive economic growth for the country.
The cause was leukemia and organ failure, said state broadcaster China Central Television.
His 14-year tenure at the apex of power confounded predictions that he and the party he led were destined — like Mikhail Gorbachev and the Soviet party — for oblivion. He not only survived China’s treacherous political currents but also halted at China’s borders the global forces that, by the end of 1991, had overthrown communism in Moscow and across the former Soviet empire.Mr.
Mr. Jiang stoked Chinese nationalism. Chinese youth, he said, should follow the example of Zhu Ziqing, a writer from his Yangtze River hometown who, gravely ill, died after refusing the sustenance offered by American-supplied grain in the 1940s. Mr. Jiang also ordered a Shanghai film studio to develop Chinese alternatives to Disney’s Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.
Mr. Jiang’s greatest talent throughout his career was probably the ability to sense and follow the prevailing wind. It was a skill that discouraged boldness.When conservatives opposed to free markets gained ground after the Tiananmen bloodshed, Mr. Jiang did little to resist, until Deng, gravely ill with Parkinson’s disease, led the way. Mr. Jiang then quickly picked up the baton, zealously promoting China’s “socialist market economy.
A diligent pupil, Mr. Jiang was admitted to Yangzhou Middle School, one of China’s best and most competitive schools. He studied English and read Leo Tolstoy, Victor Hugo and other European writers in translation. He also immersed himself in Chinese literature, particularly patriotic writings that lamented China’s weakness in the face of European colonial powers and Japan.
“Jiang was not a party hard-liner; he was simply learning to survive in Mao’s China,” Gilley wrote in the 1998 biography “Tiger on the Brink.”Reassigned from Manchuria to Shanghai in 1962, Mr. Jiang became head of the Electrical Equipment Research Institute. A work trip to Hong Kong provided his first glimpse of the capitalist world. A period of relative calm was soon disrupted by the Cultural Revolution, which began in 1966 and raged for nearly a decade. Mr.
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