Jiang Zemin

President of the People’s Republic of China (1993-2002)

• Born: August 17, 1926
• Place of Birth: Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province, China
• Died: November 30, 2022
• Place of Death: Shanghai, China

As the designated successor to Deng Xiaoping, Jiang led China during more than ten years of remarkable economic growth while avoiding serious internal and external political conflicts.

Early Life

Jiang Zemin (jyiang zay-mihn) was born in a midsize provincial city and grew up there during the Japanese military activity and occupation leading to World War II. One of his uncles was secretly active in the Communist Party and was killed by the Japanese. Following a fairly common Chinese practice, Jiang was adopted by his uncle’s widow because she and her husband had daughters only. As the adopted son of a person regarded as a Communist revolutionary martyr, many doors opened for Jiang in the party, which he joined sometime during his college years.

During World War II, Jiang entered the National Central University in Nanjing and then transferred to Jiantong University in Shanghai, from which he graduated with a degree in electrical engineering in 1947. Jiang studied automobile manufacturing in the Soviet Union during the 1950s, an opportunity undoubtedly provided to him as the son of a martyr. When he returned to China, he worked at the automobile manufacturing facilities in Changchun in northeastern China.

Life’s Work

Jiang gradually shifted his work and focus to the political bureaucracy, rising to the position of minister of electronics and entering the Communist Party’s central committee in 1983. In 1985, he became the mayor and party chief of Shanghai, and he gained a position on the politburo in 1987. Although Shanghai advanced economically while Jiang was mayor, it is not clear to what extent he can take credit for this progress. It is certain that he can be credited for his adroit handling of the student demonstrations that broke out in the winter of 1986. While these massive demonstrations disrupted traffic, they were largely peaceful and ended without requiring Jiang to call for the use of military force.

During the demonstrations, Jiang had signaled his support for the values of the demonstrators, if not their specific actions, by reciting from memory Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address, a speech believed to have calmed the situation, but without supporting student radicalism. Jiang now stood in good stead, and when Communist Party leaders chose to replace party general-secretary Zhao Ziyang in 1989 after the Tiananmen Square incident, an event with a much bloodier outcome, they chose Jiang.

At the time, most Westerners were surprised that Jiang, whose only significant post had been as Shanghai’s mayor, was appointed to such a high position. They believed that Jiang was a compromise choice selected because he was considered unthreatening to the significant political factions in the party hierarchy. In retrospect it appears that Jiang may have had a much deeper set of connections in the party hierarchy, well before the Tiananmen incident, and was very quietly biding his time and waiting for an opportunity to emerge as a national leader a strategy that other Chinese leaders used to great effect in the past.

As the Chinese Communist Party general-secretary, Jiang was the designated successor to Deng Xiaoping, who served as China’s paramount leader from 1979 until sometime in the mid-1990’s, when his health began to fail. Despite Jiang’s official designation, he could succeed Deng only if he demonstrated considerable political skill. Jiang had many competitors even after he was selected general-secretary. Some have speculated that brothers Yang Shangkun and Yang Baibing planned a coup that only Deng was able to quash. Deng supported Jiang and transferred most of his power to him in the early 1990’s.

In his 1992 public tour of southern provinces, Deng pushed for greater reform when his reform movement seemed to be slowing down. He suggested that reform should be speeded up and implied that the central leadership was the most to blame. Some thought this was a criticism of Jiang, although Deng did not identify him specifically and may have even have been criticizing himself. In any case, Jiang’s preeminence was assured when he ascended to China’s presidency in 1993. By then, he had installed a number of his Shanghai supporters to high positions in Beijing and abolished the Central Advisory Commission, a body composed of increasingly elderly veteran revolutionaries. Deng’s influence was limited by ill health, and he died in early 1997.

As China’s top leader, Jiang was reasonably successful with the international media. Unlike many Chinese political leaders, Jiang has been reasonably conversant in English, Russian, and other languages. He had engaged international visitors by discussing artistic topics and singing songs in their own language. He often appeared casual in press meetings and spoke English in many encounters, although often it was difficult to understand him.

Jiang maintained Deng’s general line in foreign policy, which promoted conciliatory policies toward both Russia and the United States. Some international events marred US-China relations, but they were not allowed to alter the fundamental US-Chinese rapprochement. In 1999, Americans used so-called smart bombs to attack a building in China that they believed housed a Serbian government unit, but it turned out that the Serbians had moved and the Chinese were using the building as an embassy. Three Chinese diplomats were killed. Jiang strongly condemned the American actions within China but was more restrained internationally.

A similar conflict with the United States occurred during the presidency of George W. Bush, and it had a comparable result. In one incident, a US spy plane had flown over Chinese territory and was shadowed by a Chinese military jet. The Chinese plane crashed after it flew too close to the US plane and received a serious blow; the American pilot was forced to land his plane. While the outcry within China was strong, there was little international protest. Eventually, the US government crafted a statement of regret that the Chinese accepted as an apology, and the issue receded from public view.

The largest domestic control issue was the status of the Falun Gong, a new Buddhist-Daoist religious group. Chinese authorities regarded the group as a threat because it was not controlled by the Communist Party, as were other organized groups. Falun Gong was banned and its leaders were imprisoned some were killed. Jiang was unable to stem the rampant corruption so typical in the Communist regime. In the Maoist period, the corruption had taken the form of bartered goods rather than cash, but Deng’s reforms once again made it possible for corrupt payments to be made in cash. The continuing economic reform program inevitably generated economic growth that was uneven across the country, as urban and coastal areas became rich at a far faster rate than did the rural interior. The reforms required closing many state-owned enterprises and creating unemployment that reached 40 percent in some areas. While these problems were serious, Jiang’s regime managed to cope with them while providing economic stability and a remarkably stable rate of growth that far exceeded that of most other countries in the world.

Jiang's role as Chinese president ended in 2003, but he remained politically active and mentored many in the next generation of China's leaders. He was last seen in public during a 2019 parade celebrating the seventieth anniversary of the Communist Party in China. Jiang died on November 30, 2022, and was honored with a state funeral.

Significance

In the wake of the military crackdown in the Tiananmen incident, Deng predicted that the use of force would provide China with twenty years of domestic stability. Jiang’s years at the top of the Chinese government fell entirely within that twenty-year window. He was the beneficiary of Deng’s reform program and the one to perpetuate that program. While Deng deserves credit for the broad outlines, Jiang must be credited with its continuation, which he managed with considerable success. Economic growth has been extremely strong, and China has had a stable foreign policy.

Jiang no doubt would have liked to see his contributions to Chinese Communist Party dogma the socialist market economy and the sociopolitical ideology called Three Represents as a lasting legacy. However, because the Three Represents dogma has been written into the Chinese constitution, a document that has been so frequently amended, its impermanence makes any claims to legacy or longevity dubious.

Bibliography

Gilley, Bruce. Tiger on the Brink: Jiang Zemin and China’s New Elite. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998.

Kuhn, Robert Lawrence. The Man Who Changed China: The Life and Legacy of Jiang Zemin. New York: Crown, 2004.

Lam, Willy Wo-Lap. The Era of Jiang Zemin. Singapore: Prentice Hall, 1999.

McDonald, Joe. "Jiang Zemin, Who Guided China’s Economic Rise, Dies." Associated Press, 30 Nov. 2022, apnews.com/article/china-beijing-hong-kong-obituaries-jiang-zemin-4ee4c5dcaf567e02efa3c5c7186af30a. Accessed 20 Aug. 2024.

Nathan, Andrew J., Zhaohui Hong, and Steven R. Smith, eds. Dilemmas of Reform in Jiang Zemin’s China. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1999.

Tien, Hung-mao, and Yun-han Chu, eds. China Under Jiang Zemin. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 2000.