Jiang Zemin: Unlikely “Flowerpot” Who Benefited a Billion Souls
Guided by the resolute conviction that “for the cause of the Party and the people, I would give my best, give my all, till my heart ceases to beat,” former Chinese President Jiang Zemin defined a generation of Chinese leadership. He consistently maintained that the people are the true makers of history and that a leader’s primary duty is to remain rooted in the masses, serving their fundamental interests above all personal gain.
This philosophy of self-sacrifice and national rejuvenation with Chinese characteristics was the centerpiece of a grand gathering held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on 17 August, where Party and state leaders, including Xi Jinping, Li Qiang, Zhao Leji, Wang Huning, Cai Qi, Ding Xuexiang, Li Xi, and Han Zheng, convened to commemorate the birth centenary of the late leader Jiang Zemin. In a powerful message, President Xi urged the nation to learn from Jiang’s rock-solid political conviction and his ability to make resolute decisions at key historical junctures.
Born on 17 August 1926 in the cultured refuge of Yangzhou, Jiangsu Province, Jiang Zemin was the product of a patriotic intellectual family. His name, “Zemin,” literally meaning “to benefit the people,” was taken from the Confucian classics, reflecting his family’s deep roots in traditional Chinese aesthetics. A defining moment of his youth occurred at the age of thirteen when he was adopted by the widow of his uncle, Jiang Shangqing—a Communist martyr—to carry on the family’s revolutionary lineage. This provided Jiang with a prestigious “communist pedigree” that would serve him well in his political ascent.
He pursued electrical engineering at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, graduating in 1947, which instilled in him the technical precision of a technocrat. His early career was spent as a bureaucrat within the state industrial system, working in factories and research institutes across Shanghai, Changchun, and Wuhan. As a young man, he was as much a student of the West as of the East, famously memorising Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address in English and the works of Shakespeare.
Jiang was an unexpected national leader, abruptly summoned from his post as Shanghai Party Secretary in June 1989. In the wake of the removal of Zhao Ziyang and the turmoil of the Tiananmen Square protests, he was selected by Deng Xiaoping as a compromise candidate who lacked a distinct factional power base. Initially dismissed by foreign observers as a brief “caretaker” figure—earning the nickname “the flowerpot” for being ornamental but non-functional—Jiang defied his detractors to rule for thirteen years, outlasting even Deng in his tenure as General Secretary.
The China Jiang inherited in 1989 was a nation in a period of deep uncertainty after Tiananmen protests, traumatised by social upheaval and facing international condemnation and economic sanctions. Internally, the Communist Party (CCP) was fractured, and the economy was suffering under a stiff austerity programme. Furthermore, the collapse of Communist regimes in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union cast a terrifying shadow over Zhongnanhai, once an imperial garden, now serves as Xi’s official residence. Jiang’s immediate task was to restore political stability and bolster the legitimacy of the one-party regime against a global current of democratisation.
Jiang navigated this transformation by meticulously building a power base within the bureaucracy and the military. He successfully engineered a “soft landing” for a severely overheated economy and oversaw the painful but necessary restructuring of state-owned enterprises (SOEs). His leadership was defined by a delicate balance between reform, development, and stability.
His Selected Works reveal a leader who prioritised scientific investigation as the basis for decision-making, famously stating, “No investigation, no right to speak”. He pushed for the “Strategy of Reinvigorating the Country Through Science and Education,” believing that the IT industry was a strategic sector that would determine China’s future development. He also professionalised the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), famously ordering the military to divest itself of its vast business empire to ensure its absolute loyalty to the Party.
Under Jiang, Chinese society underwent a profound shift towards a “developmental dictatorship”. Massive internal migration fueled the growth of coastal cities, and a new class of “red capitalists” and intellectuals emerged. However, this period also saw deepening social inequalities, a widening rural-urban gap, and rampant official corruption, which Jiang identified as a threat to the “life and death” of the Party. He responded with “spiritual civilisation” campaigns aimed at promoting public morality and traditional values.
Jiang’s most significant ideological contribution was the Theory of the Three Represents, first enunciated in 2000. This theory posited that the Party must represent advanced productive forces, advanced culture, and the fundamental interests of the majority of the people. Practically, this allowed for the recruitment of private entrepreneurs into the Party, a radical departure from traditional class theory. It was a calculated effort to co-opt new economic elites and adapt the CCP to the realities of a market economy, ensuring its continued relevance in the 21st century.
For Jiang Zemin, the stability of the Chinese state was inextricably linked to the “great solidarity” of its 56 ethnic groups, whom he envisioned as a large family bound by unbreakable historical and cultural bonds. He maintained that the Han Chinese and ethnic minorities were mutually interdependent, famously using a metaphor from Xinjiang to describe this relationship: “the roots of the cedar trees on the Tianshan Mountains are interlocked, and all the ethnic groups are linked in their hearts”.
On the international stage, Jiang was the architect of China’s re-emergence from isolation. He presided over the historic handovers of Hong Kong in 1997 and Macao in 1999, marking the end of colonial humiliation. Most crucially, he led China into the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in 2001, anchoring the country in the global economic system. Jiang relished personal diplomacy, using his extroverted personality to stabilise ties with the United States and Russia. He promoted a “New Security Concept” based on mutual trust and benefit, shifting China from a secondary player into a rising global power.
On the relations with neighbouring countries, Jiang Zemin also prioritised fruitful cooperation with developing nations, including a significant relationship with Bangladesh. During meeting with former Prime Minister of Bangladesh Begum Khaleda Zia in Beijing in December 2002, Jiang emphasised that bilateral ties had developed in an all-round way. “Inter-party exchanges and cooperation by various means and at different levels make an important contribution to the consolidation and growth of bilateral traditional friendship,” Jiang said. The CCP, in the new century, will continue its friendly exchanges with all Bangladeshi political parties, including the Nationalist Party, and push forward bilateral ties, he said.
Following Jiang’s passing in 2022, President Xi Jinping honoured him as a great Marxist, statesman, and military strategist. At the birth centenary in 2026, Xi emphasised that Jiang always “stood with the people and cared for their well-being”. Xi hailed Jiang’s innovative spirit and his strategic foresight in guiding China through “high winds and rough waters”. He noted that Jiang’s “Selected Works” serve as a major textbook for the ongoing development of socialism with Chinese characteristics, urging the Party to learn from his “rock-solid revolutionary resolve”.
Jiang Zemin matters because he proved that the CCP could adapt and thrive after the shocks of 1989 and the fall of the Soviet bloc. He moved China away from revolutionary dogma towards a practical, technocratic approach to governance. He was an effective leader who successfully navigated the 1998 floods and the Asian financial crisis, demonstrating an “exceptional art of political leadership”. Perhaps most importantly, he oversaw the first smooth and orderly transfer of power in the history of the People’s Republic when he stepped down in 2002.
Jiang’s legacy is the modern Chinese state—a global powerhouse that tripled its GDP on his watch. He left behind a China that was globally integrated, technologically advancing, and politically stable. His Theory of the Three Represents remains a pillar of Party ideology, ensuring the CCP remains an organisation capable of managing a complex modern society. Jiang Zemin took a nation on the brink and set it on a course towards rejuvenation, leaving a legacy of substantive reforms that fundamentally changed the face of China.
(The Writer is the Diplomatic Correspondent of the New Nation.)
