Commentary
Former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin died on Nov. 30. Usually, when a leader of a powerful country or political party passes away, people will discuss his political legacy. I want to share how Jiang reshaped China and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Jiang rose to power shortly after the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Before the June Fourth Incident, hundreds of thousands of protesters gathered to appeal for democracy and called for political reform. The Politburo, the CCP’s top decision-making body, was divided on handling the student-led protests. Zhao Ziyang, then-general secretary of the CCP, wanted to resolve the protests by holding dialogues with the students and following the rule of law. At the same time, Deng Xiaoping and Li Peng felt they needed to suppress the protesters with military force. Jiang chose to stand with Deng. We all know that thousands of students and Beijing residents were killed by tanks and machine guns. Jiang became the beneficiary of those deaths. He later became the CCP’s top leader (from 1993 to 2003) because he supported the brutal and bloody massacre….