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"Jiang Zemin's death could give some critical voices the idea to speak out"

Chinese President Jiang Zemin in Hong Kong, July 1, 1997. REUTERS - KIMIMASA MAYAMA

Text by: Vincent Souriau

3 mins

While China is experiencing an unprecedented protest movement against the zero Covid policy, the death of former President Jiang Zemin, a figure in the opening of the country in the 1990s and architect of the rise of the economy China, could have symbolic value in the face of the systematic repression of dissenting voices.

Interview with Philippe Le Corre, researcher specializing in China at Harvard Kennedy School, professor at Essec and former RFI correspondent in Beijing. 

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RFI: How did Jiang Zemin's two terms of office (1993-1998, 1998-2003) mark China's recent history?

Philippe LeCorre:

He will preside over a period of internationalization of China, encourage companies to invest, to trade with the rest of the world.

China is going to join the World Trade Organization and it is he who is going to preside over these discussions, in the face of a Clinton administration that is quite reluctant to open the door to him.

There will also be the six-party talks around North Korea, which will be held in Beijing with mixed success, but it is an international mediation approach that almost makes you dream today, in the Ukrainian context where China refuses to play this role.

Without forgetting, in general, the double-digit economic growth of a China which, at the time, showed its desire to be an active member of the international community, whether at the societal, economic or diplomatic level.  

On a personal level, Jiang Zemin is described as an atypical political figure: talkative, affable, a lover of Western culture.

You who interviewed and rubbed shoulders with him when you were a journalist for RFI in Beijing in the 1990s, what was your impression?

He was actually quite funny, he made a lot of jokes, he spoke English, he had an appetite for foreign languages, he wanted to interact with people.

That said, he was also a defender of the Chinese Communist Party, under very strong pressure from its leading cadres.

I remember at a press conference in Seattle, USA, where he reacted quite strenuously to several questions about human rights, saying that anyway, the most important thing for China was feeding more than a billion people and that was human rights.

But if we do the accounts, I was still able, as a foreign journalist, to question the Chinese number and meet him at various press conferences, it was relatively open.

Compared with the current situation, it is completely impossible for Western journalists, which in its own way shows the regime change and evolution that China has experienced since the mid-1990s. 

Can the death of Jiang Zemin influence one way or the other on the protest movements that China has experienced in recent days?

One could refer to the death of Hu Yaobang, who was also a former general secretary of the Party, whose

.

In China, the deaths of personalities are often detonators, so it is not at all excluded that we perceive signs related to this event, even if Jiang Zemin was 96 years old and was not a star in Chinese youth.

It is all the same a former leader who played a rather important behind-the-scenes role, especially in the early Xi Jinping years.

His death may give certain critical voices the idea of ​​expressing themselves, of comparing, say, the period of the Glorious Thirties with that of today when China has closed in on itself and enters much less into a relationship with the rest of the world. 

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