The death of former head of state and party leader Jiang Zemin comes at a sensitive time.

When state media turned their websites black and white on Wednesday and announced that Jiang had died in Shanghai at the age of 96, many thought back to 1989.

At the time, mourning for Hu Yaobang, a former party general secretary, acted as a catalyst for what would later become the student movement in Tiananmen Square.

Times are turbulent again.

The official obituary for "Beloved Comrade Jiang Zemin" emphasized the need to unite in mourning behind leader Xi Jinping.    

Friederike Böge

Political correspondent for China, North Korea and Mongolia.

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Jiang had already missed the most recent party congress in October.

The state media reported on Thursday that he was suffering from leukemia.

At 12:13 p.m. he died of organ failure.

Jiang made his last major appearance at the previous party congress in 2017, when he examined the manuscript of Xi Jinping's three-hour speech with a magnifying glass.

Jiang led the party as general secretary from 1989 to 2002 and the country as head of state from 1993 to 2003. After 1992, under his leadership, the country experienced rapid economic growth, but also repression.

Jiang had the religious movement ban and persecute Falun Gong after they held a mass meditation in Tiananmen Square.

Hundreds of thousands of supporters of the movement were arrested, sent to labor and re-education camps and tortured.

To this day, exiled Falun Gong adherents are among the most adamant and well-connected opponents of the Communist Party.   

More recently, long after his retirement, Jiang Zemin has been admired by Chinese youth for his colorful personality.

He liked to sing in public, liked to speak foreign languages ​​and had some emotional public appearances, which made him seem approachable from today's perspective.

In September 2000, Jiang gave an extensive interview to the American broadcaster CBS at the Chinese leadership's summer headquarters in Beidaihe.

Visibly relaxed, he answered the reporter's probing questions.

Whether he, Jiang, is a dictator.

Does he admire the man who blocked a People's Liberation Army tank on Tiananmen Square on June 4, 1989?

In front of the camera, the Chinese leader sang a resistance song and laughed heartily several times.

Such an interview with Xi Jinping would be unthinkable.

Jiang's appearance at the time was part of the charm offensive with which he successfully tried to bring China out of international isolation after the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Above all, he sought closer relations with the United States.

In 1997 he met President Bill Clinton in Washington.

Even after the accidental bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade by the US Air Force in 1999, it was conspicuously quick to return to business as usual.

For Jiang himself, the 1989 crackdown on the student movement was a turning point in his career.

Until then, he had only been party leader in Shanghai for a short time.

Now he has been made general secretary to keep the party together after the ouster of his more moderate predecessor, Zhao Ziyang.

He was initially seen as a transitional candidate, but with Deng Xiaoping's support he was able to quickly concentrate a lot of power in his hands.

Thursday's official obituary said that after the "serious political uproar" of 1989, meaning the bloody crackdown on the protest movement, Jiang "supported and supported the right decision of the party's central committee."

Even after stepping down as head of state in 2003, he continued to pull the strings in the background as an eminence grise for years.

He remained head of the Central Military Commission until 2004, thereby limiting the power of his successor, Hu Jintao.

At all levels, Jiang had installed guarantors, known as the Shanghai faction, who remained powerful through Hu's tenure.

The influence of Jiang's circle in the security apparatus was particularly great.

In his 13 years as party leader, Jiang, driven by his patron Deng Xiaoping and in close cooperation with Prime Minister Zhu Rongji, pursued a rapid privatization of the Chinese economy.

The consequences were high growth rates, but also corruption, social inequality and mass unemployment.

Jiang opened the Party to entrepreneurs, executives and managers, changing the character of the former Revolutionary Party forever.

China joined the World Trade Organization at this time and opened up to foreign capital.

Politically, however, no liberalization took place.

On the contrary.

Under Jiang, patriotic education in schools was massively strengthened.

He was a classic technocrat.

Like many top officials of his time, he studied engineering.

In the Soviet Union, which at the time was still supporting China's rise, he received brief training in the auto industry in the early 1950s.

The Chinese leadership on Thursday ordered flags across the country and at embassies around the world to be lowered to half-staff.

As is usual practice, foreign officials are not invited to the funeral service on the day of the funeral.