Jiang Zemin

The Unexpected Successor

Jiang Zemin was born in 1926 in Yangzhou, Jiangsu. A trained electrical engineer who had studied in the Soviet Union, he was Shanghai Party Secretary when the Tiananmen protests erupted in 1989. His decisive but relatively restrained handling of the Shanghai protests — including closing a newspaper that had shown sympathy for students, but avoiding mass violence — impressed Deng Xiaoping, who selected him as General Secretary in a surprise appointment on 24 June 1989, three weeks after the Beijing crackdown. Few expected Jiang, who had no ties to the revolutionary generation, to last. He would lead China for thirteen years.

The "Three Represents"

Jiang Zemin's major ideological contribution was the "Three Represents" theory, which he announced in 2000 and which was written into the Party constitution in 2002. The doctrine held that the CCP represented the advanced productive forces, the advanced culture, and the fundamental interests of the overwhelming majority of the Chinese people. Its practical significance was to legitimise the admission of private entrepreneurs into the Party — a sharp departure from Marxist orthodoxy that had defined the bourgeoisie as a class enemy. The Three Represents reflected the transformation of the CCP from a revolutionary party into a ruling party that accommodated China's new economic elites.

Foreign Policy and Hong Kong

Jiang's foreign policy record included the successful negotiation and execution of Hong Kong's handover from Britain on 1 July 1997 — an event Deng Xiaoping had pursued but died before witnessing — and the return of Macao from Portugal in 1999. His tenure also saw China's most serious confrontation with Taiwan: the 1995–96 Taiwan Strait Crisis, in which China fired missiles near Taiwan in response to President Lee Teng-hui's visit to the United States, and the US responded by deploying two aircraft carrier groups to the region. China also joined the WTO in 2001 under Jiang's leadership, a milestone that accelerated economic integration with the global economy.

Retirement and Influence

Jiang Zemin handed power to Hu Jintao at the 16th Party Congress in 2002 but retained the chairmanship of the Central Military Commission until 2004, an unusual prolongation of military authority. His networks — often called the "Shanghai Gang" or "Jiang faction" — remained influential in Chinese politics for years. He died in November 2022, aged 96, amid the White Paper protests against zero-COVID policies. His death, and the state funeral accorded to him, provided a brief moment of national mourning that temporarily diffused the protest atmosphere.