Advertising
Supported by
News Analysis
The former president’s death has drawn tributes from other Chinese at a difficult time for the current leader, Xi Jinping, who faces many complaints over his defiant anti-covid policies.
Send a story to any friend.
As a subscriber, you have 10 gift pieces to offer per month. Everyone can read what you share.
By Chris Buckley
The deaths of Chinese communist leaders are difficult times in political theater, and especially now with the death of Jiang Zemin shortly after a wave of public defiance on a scale not noticed since M. Jiang in 1989.
China’s current seriously autocratic leader, Xi Jinping, is expected to preside over Mr. Mourning. Jiang, who died on Wednesday aged 96, while also grappling with widespread protests against China’s exceptionally strict covid-19 restrictions. urged China to return to the path of political liberalization that was at least thinkable, if not blatantly questionable, under Mr. Jiang in the 1990s.
How Xi orchestrates this feat, paying tribute to Mr. XiJiang and preventing him from fitting into a symbolic club opposed to Mr. Xi, will be a challenge for him in the coming weeks as China tries to handle emerging coronavirus cases and an economic crisis. Back down.
“We mourn Comrade Jiang Zemin with a heavy heart and will turn our pain into strength,” Men said. Xi on Wednesday, according to an official summary of his remarks to a visiting Laotian leader. The front page of the People’s Daily, the party newspaper. newspaper, grim in black and white on Thursday, governed entirely through articles about Mr. Daily’s death. Jiang and a giant portrait of him.
“The way they mourn his death can generate more anger, even though Jiang Zemin has never enjoyed Hu Yaobang’s popularity,” Lynette H said. Ong, a University of Toronto political scientist who studies China, referring to the leader whose sudden death in 1989 sparked the Tiananmen Square protest movement. “At the very least, it will give other people a valid explanation of why to come together and cry. “
Almost instantly, the announcement of Mr. Jiang’s death has sparked a torrent of online tributes from the Chinese. Many have made sardonic, thinly veiled comparisons between M. Jiang and Xi, whose authoritarian policies have taken censorship and ideological controls to new heights.
A comment on Weibo, a social networking service in China, recalled when Mr. Jiang in 1998 used a megaphone to urge rescuers to prevent flood barriers from collapsing. a song as we move into a new era. “
Many other comments were not so eloquent. As a leader, Mr. Jiang can be arrogant and repressive when his political survival required it, and he opposes the fanatics of the banned non-secular Falun Gong movement.
But the Chinese have discovered many reasons to think more affectionately about Mr. S. S. Jiang in the top central job from 1989 until 2004, when China went from a post-Tiananmen political freeze to years of dizzying, reckless and polluting growth. Vida, however, allowed human rights lawyers, the media, combative dissidents, and liberal-minded party academics to participate in public debate, a modicum of freedom that ultimately does not exist.
“Toad, we mistakenly blamed you before; you are the roof, the floor,” one comment said, bringing up a popular nickname for M. Jiang, leaning on his chubby figure and giant glasses.
Another comment recalled 1997, when Chinese audiences were allowed to enjoy Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in a film with a risky story for the time in China. to see Titanic that year. “
Hours after his death, Weibo censors temporarily made the decision to limit observation of existing events, supposedly to prevent relatively risk-free nostalgia from becoming a harsh complaint of M. Xi and the party, especially after several days of political turbulence. The “Titanic” comment was deleted after garnering tens of thousands of likes.
“In death, Hu Yaobang became a heroic martyr, while in life he did not enjoy this reputation at all,” said Geremie R. Barmé, a sinologist in New Zealand, who in Beijing in 1989 and left shortly before the army carnage against protesters and residents. “In today’s nostalgic haze, the same can happen with Jiang Zemin. “
Over the weekend, protesters in Shanghai, Beijing, Chengdu and other Chinese cities rallied en masse and thousands to denounce strict, intrusive and expensive policies aimed at eliminating coronavirus cases. Some took the opportunity to also call for democratic change, freedom of the press. , the end of widespread censorship and even the elimination of M. Xi and the Communist Party.
The challenge had remote echoes with the 1989 movement, when the death of Hu Yaobang, a reformist leader who had been ousted from power, triggered student protests that occupied Tiananmen Square until an armed crackdown reached the square on June 4. Chinese leaders are also an instance of protest and dissent, adding Zhou Enlai in 1976.
It is possible that Xi simply uses Xi’s mourning rituals. Jiang to try to “recover from his isolation situation,” Zhang Lifan, a historian in Beijing, said in written answers to questions about Jiang’s death. Jiang.
“Whether it’s a release from the nightmare of June 4 or his return, we just have to wait and see,” Zhang said.
But any repeat of 1989 is incredibly unlikely under M’s strong safety net. Xi, advised Willy Wo-Lap Lam, a senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation that analyzes the Chinese Communist Party. “Jiang Zemin’s death will not have a shock wave. effect on Chinese policy,” he said.
Still, the challenge for Xi will be to arrange funerals to keep it that way. In delivering Jiang’s death, the party paid tribute to his achievements, especially in advancing economic adjustments and modernizing China’s military. Mr. Xi.
An announcement about the mourning arrangements for Mr. Jiang said that a memorial service will be held and, in accordance with party custom, foreign leaders will be invited.
If the death of wonderful former Chinese leaders like Deng Xiaoping is any guide, Mr. Xi can also preside over the service at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, which was attended by thousands of officials, dignitaries and most likely members of Mr. Beijing’s family. But fears of the spread of the coronavirus may limit the guest list this time.
However, regardless of the length of the ceremony, there will also be the delicate question of whether and how to go with Hu Jintao, China’s most sensible leader of the decade between Mr. Jintao. Jiang and Mr. Xi. Mr. Hu is a long list of civil servants and retired officials who will oversee arrangements for bereavement activities.
But M. Hu, notoriously shut down while in power, caused a rare uproar at a party congress in October that interrupted M. Xi’s triumphant moment before he won a five-year term in power.
On the last day of the congress, M. Hu gave the impression of being stunned, took a document from a table in front of him, and after some commotion, was abruptly escorted out of the hall while other senior officials looked forward with stone faces. Theories have spread that Mr. Hu was protesting Mr. Xi, although M. Hu’s confused expression suggests that the disease was the most likely cause. However, Xi will not need a repetition.
The report provided by Chang Che, David Pierson, Joy Dong, Claire Fu and Amy Chang Chien.
Advertising