China's former President Jiang Zemin.
Jiang Zemin, China’s former president who oversaw its accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001, passed away on Wednesday in Shanghai, state media reported. He was 96.
According to a China Daily report, Jiang died of leukemia and multiple organ failure in the course of treatment in Shanghai at 12:13 pm today.
Jiang’s absence from the 20th Communist Party congress in October, as well as the party’s centenary celebrations last year, were read as clear signs of ailing health.
He was last seen in public on October 1, 2019, taking his place among party elders invited to attend the 70th anniversary celebrations of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, and a military parade to mark the occasion.
Jiang, who served as the party’s general secretary from 1989 to 2002, was the first top leader not to have fought in Mao Zedong’s Communist revolution, which culminated in the creation of the People’s Republic following a civil war victory in 1949.
Jiang was Shanghai party chief when he was given the top job in June 1989, with Beijing in crisis mode after supreme leader Deng Xiaoping ordered a bloody crackdown on pro-democracy student protesters in Tiananmen Square, and a far-reaching purge inside the government and state targeting sympathizers of the failed movement.
Jiang’s promotion to the top came as the West turned its back on China over its violent handling of the demonstration, often labelled as the Tiananmen crackdown.
In the subsequent years, he lead some of China’s most symbolic moments, marking the country’s further integration with the US-led global system and gaining higher status as a world power.
These included the handover of Hong Kong in 1997, when the city returned to Chinese sovereignty from British colonial rule, and China formally becoming a WTO member in 2001.
In December 1996, Chinese President Jiang Zemin had visited Nepal during which he met with Nepal’s Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba.
The two sides had agreed to establish the China-Nepal Friendly and Neighborly Partnership of Generations into the 21st Century. (With inputs from Agencies)
