Jiang Zemin death brings ‘tricky moment’ for Xi Jinping amid protests

There are fears anti-lockdown protesters will use the former president’s death to create even greater public dissent against Xi Jinping.

Jiang Zemin waves during the National Day parade in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1999. Picture: AFP

The death of former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin, who has died aged 96 from leukaemia, comes at a sensitive moment for the Chinese Communist Party, which he led for more than a decade, days after resentment against the government’s strict Covid-19 controls flared into a wave of open dissent across the country.

Mr Jiang died at 12.13pm on Wednesday in Shanghai, where he succumbed to leukaemia and multiple-organ failure, according to a Communist Party communique published by Xinhua.

Picked by then-paramount leader Deng Xiaoping to helm the party after the deadly crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protests, Mr Jiang helped shore up an authoritarian system shaken by the 1989 pro-democracy movement and presided over China’s economic rise heading into the 21st century.

His death comes amid public expressions of anger against incumbent leader Xi Jinping’s Covid-19 policies, which some analysts describe as the biggest display of public dissent seen in China since the political upheaval that precipitated Mr Jiang’s ascent more than three decades ago.

China's then President Jiang Zemin (L) sits next to US President Bill Clinton during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit in Seattle in 1993. Picture: AFP.

Since the weekend protests erupted against Mr Xi’s zero-tolerance approach to Covid-19, the party has pressed to head off fresh unrest by maintaining a large police presence in major cities where demonstrations had taken place. Authorities used cellphone data and social media to track down protesters, while censors scrubbed dissenting voices from Chinese social media. A planned protest in Shenzhen was cancelled on Tuesday after police were deployed at several locations in the city, as were protests on Monday in Beijing and Shanghai.

On Wednesday, in chat groups on Telegram, an encrypted messaging app where protesters have been exchanging messages, some described Mr Jiang’s death as an opportunity to congregate in the former leader’s honour and vent anger against Mr Xi’s policies. Users also shared a black-and-white image of Mr Jiang that read: “Mourning the dead, fighting against lockdowns, for the people, for freedom.”

A former top official in the eastern metropolis of Shanghai, Mr Jiang held office as general secretary for 13 years and pushed policies that brought entrepreneurs into the Communist Party fold and accelerated China’s embrace of market principles — a trajectory that Mr Xi has halted since taking power in late 2012.

Mr Jiang retired as party chief in 2002, stepped down as president in 2003, and relinquished his seat as chairman of the party’s Central Military Commission the following year.

Party insiders say Mr Jiang exerted sway behind the scenes for many years after stepping down, thanks to his political network — known as the “Shanghai Gang” — of officials who rose to senior posts under his tutelage. That influence waned as Mr Xi curbed the clout of retired elders over the past decade, with many perceived members of the “Shanghai Gang” fading from view or getting purged in Mr Xi’s anticorruption drive.

Even so, some experts say, public memories of Mr Jiang and his time in power — which some Chinese recall as a period when the party presided over rising prosperity and showed more tolerance of dissent — could be used a cudgel against Mr Xi and his perceived failings.

“Jiang’s legacy offers a tricky challenge to the Xi leadership,” said Kerry Brown, professor of Chinese studies at King’s College London. “Because his legacy is a reminder that Chinese politics, like politics anywhere, is about delivery and not just promises.”

“Jiang had tangible achievements,” including the smooth reclamation of Chinese sovereignty over the former colonies of Hong Kong and Macau in the late 1990s, overseeing China’s accession to the World Trade Organisation in 2001, and securing Beijing’s rights to host the 2008 Summer Olympics, Mr Brown said. “Xi has been more about building on these rather than striking out on something new.”

The deaths of top Chinese officials have in the past spurred public mourning that evolved into mass demonstrations against incumbent leaders.

The 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, for instance, began as a gathering to grieve the passing of former party general secretary Hu Yaobang in April that year, before participants started airing political grievances and demanding change. At a mass gathering on Tiananmen Square in 1976 to mourn the late Premier Zhou Enlai, who died earlier that year, participants used the occasion to criticise senior officials who orchestrated the worst excesses of Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution — a show of dissent that authorities broke up by sending security forces to clear the square.

In recent years, Jiang had become the unlikely subject of viral memes among millennial and Gen Z Chinese fans, who called themselves “toad worshippers” in thrall to his frog-like countenance and quirky mannerisms.

Some used Jiang’s death to take veiled jabs at Xi on Wednesday. “Toad … can you take Winnie the Pooh away?” one asked, using a banned nickname for Xi.

Others on the popular app WeChat posted links to songs titled “Shame it Wasn’t You” and “Wrong Man”, referencing Xi.

Many of the more irreverent posts were censored from Weibo searches within minutes, with the results for Jiang’s full name only showing state media accounts.

In a tweet, the University of Oxford’s Professor Patricia Thornton questioned whether public displays of grief could “open up space for the expression of new dissent and new demands from students and other protesters”.

She referenced two other former Communist Party leaders — reformer Hu Yaobang and popular premier Zhou Enlai — whose deaths in 1989 and 1976 respectively provoked mourning events that evolved into student political rallies.

Jiang’s death “cannot but stir reflection on some stark differences between the not-so-distant past & the reality of life in Xi’s #China today”, she wrote.

Dow Jones, AFP