The 1989 protests changed all priorities. Jiang, Shanghai party secretary, was called to Beijing to become party chief. In 1993, Zhu became vice premier, and in 1998 premier, China’s economic czar. Nobody has impacted the Chinese economy as he has. Yet his massive push to set things in order and clear books and accounts was abandoned once he left power. He knew market rules can’t be ignored forever. If this happens, the economy will collapse.
søndag 16. august 2026
Goodbye, Comrade Zhu Rongji
As a young man in 1957, Zhu was punished during the anti-rightist campaign. Deng noticed him in the mid-1980s, when he was a mid-level head of the Department of Industrial Economy at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). In 1988, reportedly, Deng sent him to Shanghai to serve as mayor to shake up the city, which was lagging behind Guangdong, and to make it a spearhead of the reforms.
The 1989 protests changed all priorities. Jiang, Shanghai party secretary, was called to Beijing to become party chief. In 1993, Zhu became vice premier, and in 1998 premier, China’s economic czar. Nobody has impacted the Chinese economy as he has. Yet his massive push to set things in order and clear books and accounts was abandoned once he left power. He knew market rules can’t be ignored forever. If this happens, the economy will collapse.
The 1989 protests changed all priorities. Jiang, Shanghai party secretary, was called to Beijing to become party chief. In 1993, Zhu became vice premier, and in 1998 premier, China’s economic czar. Nobody has impacted the Chinese economy as he has. Yet his massive push to set things in order and clear books and accounts was abandoned once he left power. He knew market rules can’t be ignored forever. If this happens, the economy will collapse.