Wang Sir's News Talk | How to View the Era of Jiang Zemin

Jiang Zemin played a crucial role in China’s Reform and Opening-Up. He developed the “Three Represents” theory, promoted market economy reforms, tackled the challenges of state-owned enterprise reform, supported China’s entry into the WTO, and broke the lifetime tenure system for leaders, strengthening media supervision.

For ease of reading, the editors of this website have made appropriate modifications without altering the original intent! We also declare that this article represents the author’s views only, and this website serves solely as a platform for presenting these views to help readers gain a comprehensive understanding of historical truths!

Author | Wang Zhian

Comrades, friends, ladies and gentlemen, as well as audiences at home, Jiang Zemin has passed away. I want to talk about this former General Secretary today.

Generally, my impression of Jiang is quite good. He was once interviewed by Mike Wallace. There are only two Chinese CCP leaders who have been interviewed by Mike Wallace. One was Deng Xiaoping and the other was Jiang Zemin. For his successors, Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping, they did not dare to give interviews to the Western media. Not to Western media—I am afraid Xi would be terrified to get interviewed by domestic media. Thus, that Jiang dared to accept Wallace’s interview at that time is definitely thought to show his courage.

When Deng got the interview by Mike Wallace, firstly, the U.S. and China were still in a honeymoon period. Secondly, the time of the interview between Mike Wallace and Deng was severely limited. To be honest, Mike Wallace was shocked by Deng’s heroic personal charisma at the time. He didn’t ask particularly sharp questions, only some questions about the Lifetime Leadership System.

The situation Jiang faced was different. When Jiang got the interview by Mike Wallace, it was the toughest period between the U.S. and the P.R.C. since the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989. And Jiang knew that Mike Wallace would ask some sensitive or even tougher questions, and he accepted that. Mike Wallace pointed at him and said, “People say you are a dictator.” Jiang still talked and laughed, even facing criticism. Among the leaders of the Communist countries, I think he seems to be a rarity of rarities.

(A person’s fate, of course, depends on self-struggle. We, however, need to consider the process of history. I have never anticipated that I would be in charge of top power later when I was the mayor of Shanghai. Comrade Deng talked to me. The CPC Central Committee decided you would be the next General Secretary. I told him I was not qualified for such an important position. That’s true. I was just the mayor of Shanghai; I had no experiences in working in the core of China’s power. But, Comrade Deng insisted, “We have already made the final decision.” Later, I quoted a poem: “I shall dedicate myself to the interests of the country in life and death, irrespective of personal weal and woe.” After that, I moved to Beijing to start a new journey.)

(There are three achievements that I gained when I was General Secretary in Beijing for over ten years. Firstly, I built a framework of a socialist market economy. Secondly, I introduced Deng’s Theory into the Party constitution. The third is the Theory of Three Represents. If there is one more achievement, it is that I made a strict order to stop the PLA from doing business. This order will affect the PLA’s fate in the future because I continued to be the Chairman of the Military for another 20 months. I have served for 15 years as the Chairman of the Central Military Commission. Of course, fighting against the great deluge in 1998 was also a big achievement. Compared with the three achievements that I gained, other things were less important. I feel ashamed that I did a little work. Thank you.)

Jiang has passed away. Today, I want to talk about over ten years of Jiang’s rule. What are his greatest contributions to Chinese society? I think the most important one is to build up the Theory of Three Represents. The core philosophy that the CCP believed in the past, like Marxism-Leninism and Maoism, is Class Struggle. The so-called class struggle regards the Communist Party as a revolutionary party. The labor class is the vanguard of a revolutionary party. The peasants, the bourgeoisie, and the intellectuals are either allies or class enemies who need to be fought. The labor class is the purest element in a revolutionary party.

This theory, filled with revolutionary perspectives, has its own problem. It would sunder society into different social classes and perpetuate political movements, even purifying the Party itself through endless political movements. The standard of purification became harsher to meet, leading to an unavoidable result: the social elites could not join the governing system. Actually, members of the intellectual class could be the most valuable fortune for any kind of society. But the early philosophy that the CCP believed was that this intellectual class was a stinking ninth, and they needed to be remolded by revolutionary force. Mao remarked that the intellectual class couldn’t carry out China’s revolutionary cause. Therefore, the social status of intellectuals was naturally lower than that of workers and peasants.

The Party’s ideology decided that. What progressive effects can an intellectual make in such a context? If our society is led by illiterate proletarians, the group that is enlightened and educated becomes the target to be remolded and persecuted. Society should be a community full of anti-intellectualism. Mao’s idea, or Marxism-Leninism and Maoism, are philosophies to instigate a revolution.

After Deng’s economic reform, Deng abandoned Mao’s course in reality. But Deng Xiaoping did not actually have a set of ideologies. If you read the books on Deng’s Theory, they are not holistic. When I read Deng’s articles, I feel like I am reading Confucius’s Analects: a short sentence sets up a quotation, letting you feel reasonable.

(To respect knowledge and to respect talent. Regardless of the white cat and black cat, to catch the rat is a good cat. Useless to entangle socialism or capitalism, making economic development is our central task.)

Those quotations are not holistic. There is no unified ideology. Deng just realized Mao’s idea was wrong. Deng practiced his idea first, even though there was not a complete theoretical structure yet. That’s why I call him a pragmatist. But a governing party for a great country needs a new idea of ideology. Deng destroyed Mao’s ideology, but he did not establish his own complete philosophy.

After Jiang Zemin became the new leader of the CCP, he got help from Wang Huning and reconstructed a set of theoretical systems called the Theory of Three Represents. The so-called “Three Represents” actually transforms the Communist Party from a revolutionary party into a ruling party. The core of the Theory of Three Represents is that the CCP is no longer the so-called Vanguard of The Working Class. The CCP would also represent other social classes. The Communist Party will always represent the most advanced culture, representing the most advanced ideas and the most advanced productive forces. All classes of society, including intellectuals, farmers, and workers, even the bourgeoisie, can be members of the CCP’s representation.

Now, you can figure out the differences compared with Maoism. As I said in the Deng episode, the Communist Party would not be Communist anymore based on Deng’s reform method. The CCP would be transferred into a party characterized by European social democratic characteristics. Of course, the CCP is still the only governing party in China. If the CCP practiced the rotation of ruling parties, it would be a non-Communist Party of Communists in terms of ideology. No more Class Struggle. No more Marxism-Leninism, or at least they gave up the basic principles of Marxism-Leninism.

The timing for throwing away the old theoretical structure was when Jiang finished constructing his theory, named the Theory of Three Represents. After that, the CCP had its new theoretical system. We should admire that the system is essential. That system marked that a Party featuring revolutionary faith and ideals had started to disintegrate into a governing party. Individuals had the opportunity to criticize a Communist Party from the perspective of judging a governing party. We can have supervision by public opinion and criticism outside the Party.

A revolutionary Party won’t allow people to criticize itself—definitely not. If you repine against a revolutionary Party, you are counterrevolutionaries. You are a reactionist against revolution, an enemy against the revolutionary masses. When a revolutionary Party has changed to be a governing Party in the modern sense, people can query the legitimacy of the Party’s governance itself. People argue whether the Party is improving economic development or picking the correct way of management. If they cannot achieve that, the people can criticize the Party and require them to correct their mistakes. That’s very, very important.

I think Jiang’s Theory of Three Represents is the greatest ideological achievement of his period. That’s the first part I want to share.

Secondly, I want to say that in Jiang’s period, he navigated the complex and dangerous phases of China’s reform and opening up. We all know the key to China’s reform is to transfer the nation’s plan from economics into market economics. There are no precedents for success in the entire Communist world. We know Russia took an approach called Brittle Disintegration. The old Communist system was gone suddenly. They gave people privatization vouchers through Shock Therapy. The nation-owned system collapsed. The cost was heavy—inflation was 100,000 times higher. The social wealth accumulated by every single person in this country was gone. Eventually, an “oligarchic economy” was formed. The wealth gap between ordinary people and these oligarchs was also quite large. The economic development was not so successful.

No useful precedents from other Communist countries either. How does a Communist Party lead a state to transfer from planned economics to market economics? There are many challenges. The biggest technical issue is the management of nation-owned companies. At that time, the nation-owned companies lacked competitive power in China. That is the truth. On the other hand, the employees in nation-owned companies had Communist Party assurances. The CCP promised they could rely on the nation for their whole lives. No one could be fired without reason.

In Jiang’s period, there were several challenges he solved. Firstly, he broke the system of secure jobs. The system that employees wanted to rely on for their whole life was discarded. He decided to marketize those companies lacking competitive force, though this meant forcing workers to lay off. Marketization or bankruptcy—there were only two ways.

The company my father used to work for was almost bankrupt in the reform wave of layoffs because it lacked competitive impetus. For the workers during that period, especially those who had fallen into the swirl of reform, they suffered a lot. China had not yet established a system of social aid or welfare at that time. The fate of many families affected by layoffs was very miserable.

The last prime minister, Zhu Rongji, once remarked in his memoirs: “It is mandatory to reform state-owned companies. Without reforming state-owned companies, there is no future for China’s reform and opening-up.”

Then came the challenge brought by the double-track price system. China had a double-track price system at the beginning of price reform. One track was the interior price, and the other was the exterior price. Corruption was endemic in the gap between the two tracks of price. Many people could use their privilege to purchase goods at the cheap interior price and sell them at the high exterior price to earn lots of money. This was called bureaucrat reselling. They were privileged to realize extra income by exploiting the price gap.

Finally, the double-track system was canceled by Prime Minister Zhu, but this cancellation also caused a huge economic shock. Ghastly inflation and substantial devaluation between the RMB and US currency ensued. The throes of the Chinese economy lasted for 5 to 8 years. After that, the Chinese economy achieved high-speed development, which created the conditions for the entire economic reform in the future.

I personally feel that the most difficult aspects of China’s reform during the Jiang and Zhu eras were accomplished in this area. Eventually, China joined the WTO after solving those problems. The extraordinary rise of China’s growth started after China’s accession to the WTO.

Due to the tensions between the U.S. and the P.R.C., both parties discussed the Most-Favored-Nation issues every year. I still remember when Long Yongtu discussed China’s accession to the WTO with the U.S. The media focused on the hotspots regarding the content of the negotiations. All Chinese were so excited when China joined the WTO. We should remember that China announced its entry into the world stage after that. The real rise of China’s growth started after China’s accession to the WTO.

(Our beloved Comrade Jiang Zemin came to visit us all.) (Let’s welcome Comrade Jiang Zemin with a warm round of applause to make an important speech for us.) (I am so glad to see you today. I have just three sentences to say.) (Firstly, my sincere thanks for accepting my resignation.) (Secondly, thanks to…)

The last point, which I think is most remarkable, is that he left on time. We all know that the Communist state practices a system of life tenure, with no exception. When Deng got his power, he realized that life tenure was not acceptable because his generation of communist leaders had suffered a lot under Mao’s patriarchy. Deng was determined to break the system of life tenure for leadership.

The restricted tenure system was not limited to Deng himself. His once successors, Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, were not bound by the restricted tenure system because Hu and Zhao were removed under unusual circumstances. Jiang was also not the successor nominated by Deng himself. When Jiang retired in 2002, Deng had already passed away many years before.

The peaceful transition of power between Jiang and his successor seems to be the only time this has occurred in the entire Communist world. To be honest, if Jiang had kept his power, no one could have forced him to retire. But Jiang stepped down from power on time and handed his position to Hu Jintao. He achieved the first change of power based on a restricted tenure system in the Communist world, which has impressed me a lot.

Nowadays, after experiencing Xi’s constitutional amendment and his ambition for life tenure, people will understand how cherished the moment was when Jiang transferred his power to Hu. Jiang created a precedent in history: a leader could rule the country for 10 years and then must retire. They could retain the welfare of the general secretary, but there would be no chance to interfere with their successor’s policy decisions.

We need to note that Jiang continued as chairman of the Central Military Commission for over a year after retiring from the position of general secretary. He was said to have helped Hu get on the horse and escorted him for a while. However, he did not interfere much with Hu’s policy decisions during Hu’s 10-year period. I am convinced that this reflects the benevolence of a dominant leader.

If we look across all of East Asia, I think China during Jiang’s period can be compared with Taiwan during Chiang Ching-kuo’s period. Why do I believe that? It is said that, at that time, although the economy was relatively backward, different social classes had been improving step by step. The economy was growing, and the circumstances of each person were gradually improving. The judicial system was also improving, and society was opening up.

As a media professional at that time, I witnessed the era that seeded the print media, such as Southern Weekend, and TV programs like Focus Interview and Eastern Time and Space. It was a time of prosperous development. Although the reform aimed at the political system was suspended after 1989, the improvement of market mechanisms and the rule of law continued to be pursued. That was the golden age of China’s development and also the golden age for our media.

I used to say that Jiang and Zhu fully affirmed the role of public opinion supervision. Let me tell you a story. When I was on the Focus Interview team, we once reported on a town mayor who compelled the owner of a restaurant to commit suicide in Yunnan Province. When we broadcast this event to the public, Jiang watched it and immediately called the Secretary of the Yunnan Provincial Party Committee, ordering him to report to the central government the next morning.

When this leader from Yunnan Province arrived at Zhongnanhai, Jiang angrily rebuked him: “What the hell were you doing? Are you guys party cadres or bandits?” The leader from Yunnan did not dare respond to Jiang’s rebuke. After leaving the office, he visited the head of CCTV at that time, Zhao Huayong, and said to Zhao: “I did not mean to complain that you reported this event to the public. The truth is we have interrogated and dismissed him. You should tell the public about this fact. I was too nervous to tell Jiang this.”

The story I want to refer to is that Jiang and his deputy Zhu paid attention to the supervision of their government by the media. They had quite an open attitude toward media supervision. Another example that indicates Jiang’s attitude is when he faced foreign journalists. When he visited abroad, I am convinced that his attitude towards freedom of speech in Western society, including the fourth method of supervision of those in power by the media, was one of considerable recognition.

When he gave a lecture at Harvard University, someone asked him, “Mr. Jiang, how do you feel about the many protestors outside the lecture hall while you are speaking?” He replied, “I know that. The only thing I can do is make my voice louder, so you can hear me more clearly.”

It was definitely an open epoch that deserves our cherished memory. Every social class felt the improvement of their lives and had hope for the future. The present we are experiencing is so frustrating. People always say, “Competition is a bxxch.” Compared with Jiang’s period, Jiang Zemin was quite remarkable.

(We should be proud of our motherland’s splendid culture.) (We also have to keep up with the times.) (We should blow the trumpet of the new century.) (Let’s plant the seeds of a better cultural harvest.) (Thank you very much.)

Submitted by: Bowen
Proofread by: Sun