China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001 and won the bid to host the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing thanks to Jiang's leadership.
It was widely assumed that former Chinese President Jiang Zemin, who was plucked from obscurity to lead the governing Communist Party following the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989, would be simply another transitional figurehead, doomed to become a footnote in history.
Jiang Zemin, who passed away on Wednesday at the age of 96, defied the doubters by leading China out of diplomatic isolation after the Tiananmen Square protests, restoring ties with the United States, and presiding over a period of tremendous economic growth. In October of 2019, Jiang was spotted with other ex-leaders in Tiananmen Square to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the establishment of the People's Republic of China with a military parade.
China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, and Beijing was selected to host the 2008 Summer Olympics thanks to Jiang's leadership. Even though Deng Xiaoping, China's supreme leader, arranged Hong Kong's return to Chinese control in 1984, Jiang nevertheless considered the territory's return in 1997 to be one of his finest accomplishments.
His "Three Represents" philosophy, despite its confusing nomenclature, was more influential in shaping contemporary China by welcoming entrepreneurs, who had previously been persecuted as the "running dogs of capitalism." Despite speculation that he planned to stay in power, Jiang stepped down as party chairman in 2002, relinquishing control to Hu Jintao in China's first peaceful leadership change since the 1949 revolution.
His visitors were sometimes taken aback when they saw a jovial ex-automobile manufacturing manager who would randomly break into song, read poetry, or play musical instruments instead of the usual polished and urbane President they had been expecting. "He tended to dress in a manner that was a little on the flashy side. Jean Pierre Cabestan, a politics professor at Hong Kong's Baptist University, remarked, "I believe he was more of a human person than Hu Jintao."
As one commentator put it, "Jiang Zemin was more willing to be natural, even though it may sometimes be viewed as vulgar, not very refined." When Deng, when stationed in Shanghai, chose the Soviet-educated technocrat as his successor, the man was largely unknown. When he took over for reformer Zhao Ziyang, who had been deposed by hardliners for showing sympathy for the democratic movement that had been repressed by the army in Beijing's central Tiananmen Square in June 1989, Jiang was considered as a compromise choice by the majority of the population.
Many people at the time saw parallels between Mao's handpicked successor chairman Hua Guofeng and Deng's eventual removal of Hua from power in the late 1970s. However, Jiang persisted and, in 1993, became president as well. Jiang was so determined that he threatened self-ruled Taiwan with war exercises and missile testing in the lead-up to its first direct presidential election in 1996, permanently damaging ties between the two countries. Jiang broke the ice during a visit to the United States in 1997.
To paraphrase what he said to former US President Bill Clinton in English: "American poet Longfellow once said, 'But to act that each tomorrow finds us further than today... Act, act in the live present. We should follow the current, listen to the people, and keep moving ahead towards the formation of a fruitful strategic alliance, he added. After the 1999 Nato bombing of Beijing's embassy in Belgrade and the 2001 collision between a Chinese jet fighter and a US surveillance aircraft in Chinese airspace, Jiang handled the crises in Sino-US relations, which had sunk to their lowest ebb since diplomatic communication was restored in 1971.
As one of the few foreign dignitaries to visit George W. Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas in 2002, Jiang was able to shake hands with the American president. There were major challenges brought on by Jiang's modernization of China. Freedoms were restricted and political change stalled. He oversaw phenomenal development year after year, but the wealth gap expanded, corruption deteriorated, and social discontent increased, compelling Hu, his successor, to advocate for society's underprivileged.
Jiang was hesitant to negotiate with the exiled spiritual leader of Tibet, the Dal Audio Lama, since the Dalai Lama had appointed a little kid, just six years old, as the second highest monk in Tibetan Buddhism. In 1995, China took the little kid under house detention and anointed another youngster as the 11th Panchen Lama. After around 10,000 Falun Gong adherents invaded the Zhongnanhai leadership complex in Beijing in 1999, Jiang also outlawed the spiritual organisation as a cult.
Jiang drew inspiration from the late Mao Zedong, the Communist China's founder, in many areas. There was nothing he could do to dispel the parallels. For the People's Republic of China's 50th anniversary festivities in 1999, large images of Mao, Deng, and Jiang were paraded across Tiananmen Square on floats. To prove he was physically capable at age 73, Mao swam across the Yangtze River in 1966. Jiang went swimming in Waikiki Beach, Hawaii, on his 1997 trip to the United States.
A large number of Chinese people believe Mao to have been a talented poet. In 1999, one of Jiang's poems was featured prominently on the front pages of many newspapers. A much like Mao, Jiang combed his hair straight back and wore his pants far over his waist.
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