Disappearance

China: death of Jiang Zemin, the apparatchik who took over from the "helmsmen"

Former Chinese President Jiang Zemin in October 2002. REUTERS/Scott Olson/Pool

Text by: Igor Gauquelin Follow

9 mins

Former Chinese number one Jiang Zemin died on Wednesday, November 30, in Shanghai, at the age of 96, announced the state agency New China.

He was not the best known of the great political leaders of contemporary China, but the changes he accompanied in his country gave a historical dimension to his choices.

He was the first to embody the current face of the People's Republic of China.

That of a leading superpower. 

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When his time came, commentators referred to him as a Chinese Communist Party apparatchik, on whom few would bet.

Jiang Zemin broke through late, after his fifties, and the slowness of his rise could have prevented him from incarnating a new generation at the head of his country.

But the events of the great story ultimately decided otherwise.

In the early 1980s, the future leader of the People's Republic of China, who was interested in the economy, was vice-chairman of the Party's commission for foreign investment, a key theme.

He subsequently became Deputy Minister and then Minister of the Electronics Industry, another key theme, before becoming the mayor of Shanghai in 1985. This was a turning point;

two years later, in 1987, he joined the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee.

But Jiang Zemin will finally find himself propelled into the heart of the machinery.

Almost without transition, again two years later, in 1989. He then became general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party in June, then chairman of the Central Military Commission of the CCP in November.

A double cap that he will keep until the 2000s, and that he will combine with that of President of the Republic from 1993. He therefore has “the three crowns”.

This concentration of power in the hands of a man, which is again current today under Xi Jinping, is a novelty at this time, a first since Mao Zedong.

So how could this have happened?

How did this engineer in the shadows without much charisma so suddenly become the face of an increasingly conquering China in globalization, and to whom we will then continue to lend an immense influence in the mysteries of Beijing under the presidency Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping almost until his death?

Jiang Zemin, at the end of the 14th CCP Congress in October 1992 in Beijing, is greeted by his predecessor Deng Xiaoping.

AFP PHOTO

The story of an unplanned ascent

Where did Jiang Zemin derive his legitimacy from?

The answer is ultimately in one word:

Tiananmen

.

It was the tragic massacre of a multitude of pro-democracy students on June 4, 1989 opposite the Forbidden City, in the most famous square in the Chinese capital, which disqualified all the political rivals of this child from the coastal province of Jiangsu.

These events cleared the way for him, transforming him into a consensual figure who was going to save the regime in this moment of intense upheavals at the height of power.

In 1989, at the time of the repression, China was still in the hands of an old man, Deng Xiaoping, weakened since 1986 by the fall of his first dolphin, Hu Yaobang, who disappeared in 1989, which provoked the movement.

Deng is a national monument: successor to Mao, he reoriented the regime towards economic reform, giving the country a hybrid face between communism and capitalism.

At dusk, around the "little helmsman", one of the rising figures of the CCP is then called Zhao Ziyang.

He is the general secretary of the Party.

Another is called Li Peng.

He is Prime Minister.

The two ambitions will collide to the benefit of Jiang Zemin.

The conservative Li Peng embodies a hard line, and suggests repressive measures to Deng in the face of the Tiananmen movement.

During a meeting with student representatives, live on television, he turned a deaf ear to their demands.

Reformer Zhao Ziyang, on the other hand, is in favor of negotiations.

He will go so far as to go down to Tiananmen Square to discuss with the demonstrators and give them a message of appeasement, again under the cameras.

The flexibility of one will cause his loss, since Zhao Ziyang, after this filmed discussion, will be deposed and will spend the rest of his days under house arrest – he died in 2005. The grip of the other will serve him to impose himself on first, of course.

But by leading the repression of the movement for Deng, Li Peng will then condemn himself to a personal impasse.

The summit of Chinese power then sets out, willy-nilly, in search of a third man, a fairly strong and consensual incarnation.

The witness is quickly passed on to the discreet Jiang Zemin.

Former President Jiang Zemin, where it all really began for him, Tiananmen Square, with Xi Jinping, Hu Jintao and Vladimir Putin, on the 70th anniversary of the Japanese surrender, September 3, 2015. AFP PHOTO / GREG BAKER

Jiang Zemin put to the test of power

Clever during the Tiananmen crisis, Jiang will have been able to remain united with the line of the leader even in the traumatic repression of the student movement, while keeping the virginity of a newly arrived man.

It therefore becomes a possible point of balance in a beleaguered CCP, eager to reassert with authority, in the long term, its central place in the life of the Chinese.

This is what is happening.

Under the impetus of the newcomer, the consensus will be established by force: no internal conflict in the political office will ever have to filter outside.

Times are then turbulent everywhere around the People's Republic of China.

And the fall of the Berlin Wall, then of the USSR, definitively buried any desire for political reform, a major claim of Tiananmen.

Especially since internally, Jiang Zemin initially relied on the conservatives to establish his influence.

 The Maoist precept 'you have to be red before you are an expert' is once again becoming the watchword in every company, administration or university.

The market economy is virtually suppressed 

”, comment the authors of the documentary

China, the new empire

.

But just as skilfully, on the contrary, Jiang Zemin took over in the following years on his own the last political and economic wishes of Deng Xiaoping, more flexible views, which he defended on the occasion of the XIVth Congress of the CCP in 1992. The future President of the Republic then endorsed the new

Chinese-style socialism

 "

dear to his predecessor, between the all-powerful Party and the imperative to pursue growth, through the market economy, to bring the country out of withdrawal and underdevelopment.

All while protecting the state industrial sector.

The tutelary figure, Deng Xiaoping, finally died in 1997. From then on, it was Jiang Zemin who embodied the new consensus in China, his Prime Minister

Zhu Rongji

taking on the responsibility of embodying the reformist line.

Beijing is embarking on the quest for productivity and profits, in an unbridled capitalism made up of privatizations, downsizing and bankruptcies.

Social protections are declining, fundamental rights at work as well.

The first migrant workers appear.

There are now

hundreds of millions

.

The China of the billionaires

is already on the move.

Jiang will leave a doctrine behind him, first mentioned in February 2000, and set in stone in 2001, during the 80th anniversary of the CCP.

Our Party,

" he said, "

must always represent the development demands of China's progressive productive forces, represent the orientation of vanguard culture, and represent the fundamental interests of the majority of the country's people. "

 This is the “ 

three representations 

” theory, aimed at integrating economic elites into the CCP apparatus.

It will be added to the statutes of the Party in 2002 then in the Constitution in 2003.

Between Boris Yeltsin and Jiang Zemin, the current really seemed to pass.

ROBYN BECK / AFP

The first to embody China today

It was under the reign of Jiang Zemin that the People's Republic of China reasserted itself with force in a changing world, with in particular

the retrocession of Hong Kong,

as well as its powerful financial stock exchange, by the United Kingdom in 1997. Then with

the entry into the World Trade

Organization (WTO) in 2001. At the same time, the country has gone from 1989 to the present day, from approximately 20 billion constant dollars estimated in military expenditure, to more than 200 billion constant dollars currently,

according to SIPRI figures

.

Of course, he retains his permanent place on the UN Security Council.

Jiang Zemin and “ 

his famous rectangular tortoiseshell glasses

 ”,

as RFI described him

a few years ago, places his “ 

Shanghai men

 ” in positions of responsibility within civilian and military institutions.

And to survey the world, as a conquering leader with whom everyone wants to sign contracts.

He forges strong bonds along the way.

 France then sells Airbuses to China.

Jacques Chirac is all smiles.

But one evening in 1999, the French public will remember from Jiang Zemin only his frenzied waltz with Bernadette, wife of Chirac, to the sound of a Corrèze accordion.

Mark of esteem: the Chinese president visits the French president in his castle of Bity (Corrèze).

 »

Finally, it was Jiang Zemin who banned the renewal of the mandates of Party officials, and therefore his own withdrawal from the forefront, which took place in 2003. Until the following year, he kept his post as Chairman of the Military Commission to leave gently.

But the real transition, the transfer of power, he will not control any more than his predecessors could control theirs, or than his successors will be able to do so thereafter.

This is explained on

the Asialyst news site by researcher Alex Payette

, who specializes in the Chinese Party-state and its elites.

Willy-nilly, Hu Jintao took over, revitalizing the political precepts of the philosopher

Confucius

in power in the 2000s. Then came the era of Xi Jinping, the tough man, who gradually relegated Jiang Zemin to the role of intriguing out of age of the mysteries of the shadows, the old dean to whom we lend all the shenanigans, and whom we try to annihilate while showing him for

special occasions

.

In the last years of his life, observers will chronicle his gradual decline in influence, spurred on by Mr. Xi.

Since his accession to power, when Xi Jinping speaks of tigers and flies, in other words of powerful corrupt leaders and petty bureaucrats who allow corruption to flourish, we have become accustomed to thinking of Jiang Zemin, as he embodied the figure of the

tiger

par excellence.

Despite gigantic suspicions concerning him, concerning his whole clan, his family, his allies, despite the fall of relatives also in

the fight against corruption

, nevertheless, he will never have been personally worried by his powerful successor.

Sign that even at a very advanced age, Jiang Zemin continued at best to be respected within the Party, and at worst to be feared there because of his power of nuisance.

Make no mistake about it, the veteran's legacy is immense, both the People's Republic of China and its Party-State, the largest political formation in the world with its tens of millions of members, in the most populous nation on Earth it -even, have changed in nature and dimension since the discreet Jiang took the reins one day by opportunity.

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