Obituary | An unlikely strongman

Jiang Zemin oversaw a wave of economic change, but not much political reform

China’s party leader from 1989 to 2002 died on November 30th, aged 96

LOS ANGELES, UNITED STATES: Chinese President Jiang Zemin sings a selection from "Beijing Opera" during a dinner hosted by the Chinese community of Los Angeles 02 November at a Los Angeles hotel. Jiang concluded a eight-day visit to the US with meetings with business and political leaders in Los Angeles. AFP PHOTO Hector MATA (Photo credit should read HECTOR MATA/AFP via Getty Images)

Nov 30th 2022

Talking to Mike Wallace on “60 Minutes” in 2000, wagging his finger—and with his ever-mobile face fixed, briefly, in a stare—Jiang Zemin quoted from the Gettysburg address. He had committed it to memory as a student activist, before the Communist Party came to power in 1949. “Government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth,” he said. His English was not great, but it brimmed with the confidence of a man who was delivering “for the people” all right: material progress on a scale and at a speed that history had not seen before. And it had started on his watch.

This article appeared in the Obituary section of the print edition under the headline “An unlikely strongman”