Flags were flown at half-mast across China on Tuesday in memory of former Prime Minister Zhu Rongji. He was the last of a generation of politicians who led China toward a market economy, driving China's extraordinary economic growth but leaving behind deep problems of inequality.
Top leaders, including President Xi Jinping, attended an official farewell ceremony in Beijing to pay tribute to Zhu Rongji, who died last Wednesday at the age of 97, state media reported. His body has been cremated.
The death of a senior leader is a sensitive moment in Chinese politics, as people may take the opportunity to implicitly express criticism of the current leadership. There is an additional sensitive factor in Zhu Rongji's farewell ceremony: just one day ago, Beijing celebrated the 100th anniversary of Jiang Zemin's birth. Jiang Zemin, a Communist Party leader who worked with Zhu Rongji in the 1990s, died in 2022.
Experts said that the commemoration of Jiang Zemin and the farewell to Zhu Rongji have triggered people's nostalgia for their era. That era saw some of China's most profound economic changes. Experts say this could spark the very contrast that the Chinese Communist Party wants to avoid - between a past filled with optimism and energy and the prevailing sense of sluggishness and uncertainty in the present.
Under Xi Jinping, the party has invested heavily in some technology industries, backing factories to churn out semiconductors and electric vehicles to feed the global craze. But many ordinary Chinese people feel that their lives are difficult. The protracted housing crisis has weighed on the economy, and job prospects for young people have shrunk sharply. The party has also tightened its grip on private business, further increasing uncertainty for the entrepreneurs and investors who once drove China's economic growth.
“He doesn’t want this moment to raise questions about what he’s doing,” Joseph Torigian, an associate professor at American University who studies China’s political elite, said of Xi.
“He very much wants to convince people that what he is doing is not a brief, foolish detour from the reform narrative that once gave Jiang and Zhu Da the spotlight,” Tang Zhixue said.
Tang Zhixue pointed out that this was reflected in Xi Jinping's speech in memory of Jiang Zemin on Monday. In his speech, Xi Jinping emphasized the continuity between his own administration and that of Jiang Zemin, seeking to quash criticism of the country's direction. He emphasized their similarities in Marxist beliefs and the strength of the Communist Party, and cast himself as a modernization promoter like Jiang Zemin who made changes in response to the development of the times.
In the 40-minute speech, Xi Jinping reiterated Jiang Zemin's legacy of moderate market liberalization and praised Jiang Zemin's decisive decision in times of crisis. He said that just as Jiang Zemin responded to international emergencies including the 1997 Asian financial crisis, today's party must "actively respond to major tests in high winds and even stormy seas with a tenacious fighting spirit and superb fighting skills." The statement is often interpreted as a metaphor for China's growing competition with the United States over trade, technology and global influence - a competition that has intensified under Xi Jinping.
Memorial ceremonies for many former Chinese leaders are conducted according to rules established over decades. Video of the farewell ceremony for Zhu Rongji was not immediately released to the public, but state media said party officials paid tribute to him at the Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery in western Beijing, each bowing three times as a mark of respect. According to Xinhua News Agency, former national leader Hu Jintao, who had appeared to be sick before, did not attend the ceremony but sent a wreath to express his condolences.
