Name	Hu Jintao
Office	6th General Secretary of the Communist Party of China
Deputy
Term start	15 November 2002
Term end
Predecessor	Jiang Zemin
Office2	President of the People's Republic of China
Premier2	Wen Jiabao
Vicepresident2	Zeng QinghongXi Jinping
Term start2	15 March 2003
Term end2
Predecessor2	Jiang Zemin
Office3	Chairman of the CPC Central Military Commission
Deputy3	Xi JinpingGuo BoxiongXu Caihou
Term start3	19 September 2004
Predecessor3	Jiang Zemin
Office4	Chairman of the PRC Central Military Commission
Deputy4	Xi JinpingGuo BoxiongXu Caihou
Term start4	13 March 2005
Predecessor4	Jiang Zemin
Office5	Member of theNational People's Congress
Constituency5	Guizhou At-large (88-93,98-03)Tibet At-large (93-98,03-08)Zhejiang At-large (08-)
Term start5	6 June 1988
Office6	6th Vice President of the People's Republic of China
President6	Jiang Zemin
Term start6	15 March 1998
Term end6	15 March 2003
Predecessor6	Rong Yiren
Successor6	Zeng Qinghong
Birth date	December 21, 1942
Birth place	Jiangyan, Jiangsu Province China
Party	Communist Party of China
Spouse	Liu Yongqing
Children	Hu HaifengHu Haiqing
Residence	Zhongnanhai
Alma mater	Tsinghua University
Profession	Hydraulic engineer
Signature	Hu Jintao Sign.png }}

Hu Jintao (Pinyin: Hú Jǐntāo, pronounced ; born 21 December 1942) is the current Paramount Leader of the People's Republic of China. He has held the titles of General Secretary of the Communist Party of China since 2002, President of the People's Republic of China since 2003, and Chairman of the Central Military Commission since 2004, succeeding Jiang Zemin as the top leader of fourth generation leadership of the Communist Party of China.

Hu has been involved in the Communist party bureaucracy for most of his adult life, notably as Party secretary for Guizhou province and the Tibet Autonomous Region, and then later first Secretary of the CPC Secretariat and Vice-President under former leader Jiang Zemin. Hu is the first leader of the Communist Party without any significant revolutionary credentials. As such, his rise to the presidency represented China's transition of leadership from establishment communists to younger, more pragmatic technocrats.

During his term in office, Hu reintroduced state control in some sectors of the economy that were relaxed by the previous administration, and has been conservative with political reforms. Along with his colleague, Premier Wen Jiabao, Hu presided over nearly a decade of consistent economic growth and development that cemented China as a major world power. He sought to improve socio-economic equality domestically through the Scientific Development Concept, which aimed to build a "Harmonious Society" that was prosperous and free of social conflict. Meanwhile, Hu kept a tight lid on China politically, cracking down on social disturbances, ethnic minority protests, and dissident figures. In foreign policy, Hu advocated for "China's peaceful development", pursuing soft power in international relations and a business-oriented approach to diplomacy. Through Hu's tenure, China's influence in Africa, Latin America, and other developing countries has increased.

Hu possesses a low-key and reserved leadership style, and is a firm believer in consensus-based rule. These traits makes Hu a rather bland figure in the public eye, but also represents the focus in Chinese politics on technocratic competence rather than personality. Due to term restrictions, he must step down as General Secretary in 2012 and President in 2013.

Early life

Hu Jintao was born in Taizhou, Jiangsu on 21 December 1942. His branch of the family migrated from Jixi County of Anhui province to Jiangyan during his grandfather's generation. Official records therefore describe him as a native of Jixi without mention of Jiangsu.

Though his father owned a small tea trading business in Taizhou, the family was relatively poor. His mother died when he was seven, and he was raised by an aunt. Hu's father was later denounced during the Cultural Revolution, an event that (together with his relatively humble origins) apparently had a deep effect upon Hu, who diligently tried to clear his father's name.

Hu was a gifted student in high school, excelling in activities such as singing and dancing. In 1964, while still a student at Beijing's Tsinghua University, Hu joined the Communist Party of China (CPC), before the Cultural Revolution. He was the chairman of Tsinghua Student Union at that time. He graduated in hydraulic engineering in 1965. At Tsinghua, Hu met a fellow student Liu Yongqing, now his wife. They have a son and a daughter named Hu Haifeng and Hu Haiqing respectively.

In 1968, Hu volunteered for his service in Gansu and worked on the construction of Liujiaxia Hydroelectric Station while also managing Party affairs for the local branch of the Ministry of Water Resources and Electric Power. From 1969 to 1974, Hu worked for Sinohydro Engineering Bureau, as an engineer.

Early political career

In 1973, Hu was transferred to the Construction Department of Gansu as a secretary. The next year he was promoted to vice senior chief. In 1980, Deng Xiaoping implemented the "Four Transformations" program, which aimed to produce communist leaders who were "more revolutionary, younger, more knowledgeable, and more specialized." In response to this nation-wide search for young party members, Song Ping, the first secretary of CPC Gansu Committee (Gansu's governor) discovered Hu Jintao and promoted him several ranks to the position of deputy head of the commission. Another protégé of Song, Wen Jiabao, also became prominent at the same time.

In 1982, Hu was promoted to the position of Communist Youth League Gansu Branch Secretary and was appointed as the director of the All-China Youth Federation. His mentor Song Ping was transferred to Beijing as Minister of Organization of the Communist Party of China, and was in charge of senior cadres' recommendation, candidacy and promotion. With the support of Hu Yaobang and Deng Xiaoping, Hu was assured of a bright future in the party. At Song Ping's suggestion, in 1982 central Party authorities invited Hu to Beijing to study at the Central Party School. Soon after, he was transferred to Beijing and appointed as secretariat of the Communist Youth League Central Committee ("CY Central"). Two years later Hu was promoted to First Secretary of CY Central, thus its actual leader. During his term in the Youth League, Hu escorted Hu Yaobang, who was General Secretary of CPC then, in visits around the country. Hu Yaobang, himself a veteran coming from the Youth League, could reminiscence his youth through Hu's company.

Party Committee Secretary of Guizhou

In 1985, Hu Yaobang pushed for Hu Jintao to be transferred to Guizhou as the provincial Committee Secretary of Communist Party of China. Hu attempted to improve the economy of the backwater province, and reputedly visited all of its eighty-six counties. While in Guizhou, Hu was careful to follow Beijing's directives and had a reputation of being "airtight"; he rarely would offer his views on policy matters in public. While Hu was generally seen as an official with integrity and honesty, some locals preferred his predecessor Zhu Houze. In 1987, Hu Jintao handled the local students protest parallel to the Democracy Wall carefully, whereas in Beijing similar protests resulted in Hu Yaobang's forced resignation.

Tenure in Tibet

The exit of his patron Hu Yaobang from the political scene was initially seen as unfavourable towards Hu Jintao. He drew criticism from party elders for failing to criticize the ousted reformer. In 1988, Hu was transferred to become Party Regional Committee Secretary of the Tibetan Autonomous Region, the restive area's number-one figure, while also taking on the role of Political Commissar of the local People's Liberation Army units. A number of Tibetans have long been opposed to government policy in the region and unrest and ethnic conflict were brewing, particularly anti-Han Chinese sentiments amongst local Tibetans. Minor clashes had been occurring since 1987, and when the scale of unrest grew, Hu responded with the deployment of some 1,700 People's Armed Police into Lhasa in February 1989 in an attempt to warn against further disturbance. Increased clashes culminated in serious rioting in Lhasa's core on 5 March 1989, five days before the 30th anniversary of the 1959 Tibetan uprising. What occurred after is a matter of dispute: rioters accused the police of shooting them arbitrarily, and the police claiming that they had acted in self-defense. In addition, there was speculation that Hu delayed his orders to clamp down on the protesters until late into the evening, when the police chief was forced to act because the situation was spiraling out of control. The protesters were suppressed early into the next day, and Hu asked Beijing to declare martial law on 8 March.

Hu's role in the demonstrations and rioting on March 5 was never made clear. While it is general protocol that Hu must have at least implicitly approved the use of force against protesters, whether he actually gave orders throughout March 5 is a matter of debate. In addition, John Tkacik cites that Hu had been coordinating with the Chengdu Military Region for troops to be on full alert as the situation progressed. Some diplomatic analysts linked what they saw as Hu's brutal use of force to the suppression of activists and students at in Tiananmen Square, which took place a mere three months later. Whether Hu provided "inspiration" for the PLA on June 4 is a matter of debate, but it was clear that Hu's actions in Lhasa earned him unprecedented attention in the upper echelons of party power, including paramount leader Deng Xiaoping. When tanks rolled into Tiananmen Square, Hu was one of the first regional leaders to declare his support for the central authorities. Hu experienced high-altitude sickness in June 1990, and returned to Beijing, but remained in his position for another two years, during which Hu achieved little. But his departure to Beijing was seen as a means to return to the centrefold of Chinese politics, which led to some doubts as to whether or not he was as ill as he had claimed.

Candidacy

Before the opening of the 14th National Congress of the CPC in 1992, the Party's senior leaders, including Deng and Chen Yun, were to select candidates for the Politburo Standing Committee to ensure a smooth transition of power from the so-called second-generation leaders (Deng, Chen, Li Xiannian, Wang Zhen, etc.) to third-generation Communist Party of China leaders (Jiang Zemin, Li Peng, Qiao Shi etc.). Deng also proposed that they should consider another candidate for a further future transition, preferably someone under fifty to represent the next generation of leaders. Song, as the organization chief, recommended Hu as an ideal candidate for the prospect of a future leader. As a result, shortly before his 50th birthday, Hu Jintao became the youngest member of the seven-member Politburo Standing Committee, and the second youngest Politburo Standing Committee member ever since the CPC took power in 1949.

In 1993, Hu took charge of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee, which oversaw day-to-day operations of the Central Committee, and the Central Party School, which was convenient for him to bring up his own supporters among senior CPC cadres. Hu was also put in charge of the ideological work of the CPC. Although Hu was considered heir apparent to Jiang, he always took great care to ensure that Jiang be at the center of the spotlight. In late 1998, Hu promoted Jiang's unpopular movement of the "Three Stresses" "stress study, stress politics, and stress healthy trends" giving speeches to promote it. In 2001, he publicized Jiang's Three Represents theory, which Jiang hoped to place him on the same level as other Marxist theoreticians. As a result, he left the public with an impression of being low-key, courteous, and adept at forming coalitions. In 1998, Hu became Vice-President of China, and Jiang wanted Hu to play a more active role in foreign affairs. Hu became China's leading voice during the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999.

Secretaryship and Presidency

Since taking over as Party General Secretary at the Sixteenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Hu and his premier, Wen Jiabao, proposed to set up a Harmonious Society which aims at lessening the inequality and changing the style of the "GDP first and Welfare Second" policies. They focused on sectors of the Chinese population that have been left behind by the economic reform, and have taken a number of high profile trips to the poorer areas of China with the stated goal of understanding these areas better. Hu and Wen Jiabao have also attempted to move China away from a policy of favouring economic growth at all costs and toward a more balanced view of growth that includes factors in social inequality and environmental damage, including the use of the green gross domestic product in personnel decisions. Jiang's clique, however, maintained control in most developing areas, therefore Hu and Wen's measures of macroeconomic regulation faced great resistance.

SARS crisis

The first crisis of Hu's leadership happened during the outbreak of SARS in 2003. Following strong criticism of China for initially covering up and responding slowly to the crisis, he dismissed several party and government officials, including the health minister, who supported Jiang, and the Mayor of Beijing, Meng Xuenong, widely perceived as Hu's protégé. Meng's dismissal was sometimes seen as a yielding compromise to erode Jiang's support in the party. Hu and Wen took steps to increase the transparency of China's reporting to international health organizations, indirectly dealing a blow to Jiang's stance on the issue at hand.

Succession of Jiang Zemin

On 15 November 2002, a new Hu Jintao-led Politburo nominally succeeded Jiang. Although Jiang, then 76, stepped down from the powerful General Secretary and the Politburo Standing Committee to make way for a younger ''fourth generation'' of leadership, there was speculation that Jiang would retain significant influence because Hu was not associated with Jiang's influential ''Shanghai clique'', to which six out of the nine members of the all-powerful Standing Committee were believed to be linked. However, later developments show that many of its members have shifted their positions. Zeng Qinghong, for example, moved from a disciple of Jiang to serving as an intermediary between the two factions. In 2003, Jiang was also re-elected to the post of Chairman of the Central Military Commission of the CPC, a post from which Deng Xiaoping was able to wield power from behind the scenes as 'paramount leader', thus retaining military power.

Western observers attribute a sense of caution to Hu's philosophies, citing China's recent history of fallen heirs. Deng Xiaoping appointed three party General Secretaries, all designed to be successors, and was instrumental in the ousting of two of them, Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang. His third and final selection, Jiang Zemin, won Deng's continued, although ambiguous backing and was the only General Secretary in Communist Chinese history to voluntarily leave his post when his term ended.

Although many believe Hu was originally hand-picked by Deng as the youngest member of China's top leadership and a leading candidate to succeed Jiang, he had exercised a great deal of political skills between 1992 and 2002 to consolidate his position, and eventually emerged as Jiang's heir apparent in his own right. Hu also benefited from the slow but progressive institutionalization of power succession within the Party, something his predecessors lacked entirely. Since the early 1980s, the People's Republic of China has been marked by progressive institutionalization and rule by consensus, and moved away from the Maoist authoritarian model. Although a western-style legal institution and rule of law remain to be put in place, Hu's power succession was conducted in a fairly orderly and civil manner, which was unprecedented in Communist China's history. This trend is expected to continue and an institutionalized mechanism of power transition is expected to emerge, first perhaps within the Party. In fact, it has been one of the Party's stated major goals to create an orderly system of succession and mechanism to prevent informal rule and a cult of personality.

The rivalry between Jiang and Hu after Jiang stepped down from his posts was, arguably, an inevitable product of China's tradition of succession. Some analysts argue that although Jiang has consolidated power by the time he retired, his ideological stature within the Communist Party remains shaky at best, thus Jiang had to buy time to ensure that his ideological legacy such as the Three Represents, is enshrined in China's socialism doctrine. Jiang resigned as Chairman of the Central Military Commission in September 2004, his last official post. Whether this is the result of pressure from Hu or a personal decision is up for speculation. Since then Hu has officially taken on the three institutions in the People's Republic of China where power lie, the party, the state, as well as the military, thus informally, has become the paramount leader.

Hu and Premier Wen Jiabao inherited a China wrought with internal social, political and environmental problems. One of the biggest challenges Hu faces is the large wealth disparity between the Chinese rich and poor, for which discontent and anger mounted to a degree which wreaked havoc on communist rule. Furthermore, the cronyism and corruption plaguing China's civil service, military, educational, judicial and medical systems sought to destroy the country bit by bit. In the beginning of 2006, however, Hu launched the "8 Honours and 8 Disgraces" movement in a bid to promote a more selfless and moral outlook amongst the population. China's increasingly fragile environment has caused massive urban pollution, sandstorms and the destruction of vast tracts of habitable land. It remains to be seen if Hu, usually cautious in nature, is capable of managing the continued peaceful development of China while avoiding international incidents, at the same time presiding over an unprecedented increase in Chinese nationalist sentiment.

At the 17th CPC National Congress, Hu was re-elected as General Secretary and Chairman of the CPC Central Military Commission on 22 October 2007. At the 11th National People's Congress, Hu was re-elected as President on 15 March 2008. He was also re-elected as Chairman of the PRC Central Military Commission.

''Newsweek'' named Hu the second most powerful person in the world referring to him as "the man behind the wheel of the world's most supercharged economy." ''Forbes'' also named him the second most powerful person in the world. Hu was named the 2010 World's Most Powerful Person by Forbes Magazine. Hu has been listed four times (2008, 2007, 2005 & 2004) on the Time 100 annual list of most influential people.

Political positions

Scientific Perspective and Harmonious Society

Political observers indicate that Hu has distinguished himself from his predecessor in both domestic and foreign policy. Hu's political philosophy during his presidency is summarized by three slogans — a "Harmonious Society" domestically and "Peaceful Development" internationally, the former aided by the Scientific Development Concept, which seeks integrated sets of solutions to arrays of economic, environmental and social problems, and recognizes, in inner circles, a need for cautious and gradual political reforms. The Scientific Development doctrine has been written into the Communist Party and State Constitutions in 2007 and 2008, respectively. The role of the Party has changed, as formulated by Deng Xiaoping and implemented by Jiang Zemin, from a revolutionary party to a ruling party. Hu continues the Party’s modernization, calling for both "Advancement" of the Party and its increasing transparency in governance.

What emerges from these philosophies, in the view of Hu, is a country with systematic approach to national structure and development that combines dynamic economic growth, a free market energized by a vigorous "nonpublic" (i.e., private) sector, heavy-handed political and media control, personal but not political freedoms, concern for the welfare of all citizens, cultural enlightenment, and a synergistic approach to diverse social issues (the Scientific Development Perspective) that lead, in Hu’s vision, to a "Harmonious Society". In the view of the Chinese government, these philosophies, which has created a new "China Model" of governance, serves as a legitimate alternative to the West's "Democracy Model", particularly for developing countries. In Hu’s words, "A harmonious society should feature democracy, the rule of law, equity, justice, sincerity, amity and vitality." Such a society, he says, will give full scope to people's talent and creativity, enable all the people to share the social wealth brought by reform and development, and forge an ever closer relationship between the people and government.

Western criticism of Hu, particularly regarding human rights, exposes his hypersensitivity to social stability but does not lay as much emphasis on his fresh commitment to address China’s multi-faceted social problems. Hu’s pragmatic, non-ideological agenda has two core values—maintaining social stability to further economic development and sustaining Chinese culture to enrich national sovereignty. In domestic policy, he seems to want more openness to the public on governmental functions and meetings. Recently, China's news agency published many Politburo Standing Committee meeting details. He also cancelled many events that are traditionally seen as communist extravagances, such as the lavish send-off and welcoming-back ceremonies of Chinese leaders when visiting foreign lands. Furthermore the Chinese leadership under Hu has also focused on such problems as the gap between rich and poor and uneven development between the interior and coastal regions. Both party and state seem to have moved away from a definition of development that focuses solely on GDP growth and toward a more balanced definition which includes social equality and environment effects.

In 2004, Hu gave an unprecedented showing and ordered all cadres from the five major power functions to stop the tradition of going to the Beidaihe seaside retreat for their annual summer meeting which, before, was commonly seen as a gathering of ruling elites from both current and elder cadres to decide China's destiny, and also an unnecessary waste of public funds. The move was seen by the Chinese public as symbolic of Hu's attitude towards corruption.

In June 2007, Hu gave an important speech at the Central Party School that was indicative of his position of power and his guiding philosophies. In the speech Hu used a very populist tone to appeal to ordinary Chinese, making serious note of the recent challenges China has been facing, especially with regards to income disparity. In addition, Hu noted the need for "increased democracy" in the country. Although the term has different meanings in the party than it does in the general Western sense, it shows that Hu's administration has placed political reform as an important part of the agenda in the coming years, a tone that was nonexistent during the Jiang era.

Media control

Despite initial expectations that Hu was a "closet liberal", Hu has shown a fairly hard-line approach to liberalisation of the media.

The media has been given greater latitude in reporting many topics of popular concern, such as the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, as well as into malpractices at the local level. The government has also been responsive to criticism of its media policy, for example in response to the SARS epidemic, and in regard to public commemorations of popular, but deposed, former leader Zhao Ziyang.

Hu has been very cautious with regards to the Internet, choosing to censor politically sensitive material to a degree more strict than the Jiang era. In February 2007, Hu embarked on further domestic media controls that restricted primetime TV series to "morally correct" content—he objected to lowbrow programming including some reality shows—on all Chinese TV stations, and listed "20 forbidden areas" of coverage on news reporting.

Taiwan

Early in his presidency, Hu faced an independence-supporting counterpart in the form of then-President of the Republic of China Chen Shui-bian. Chen called for talks without any preconditions, repudiating the 1992 consensus. Chen Shui-bian and his party had continued to express an ultimate goal of Taiwanese independence, and make statements on the political status of Taiwan that the PRC considers provocative. Hu's initial response was a combination of "soft" and "hard" approaches. On the one hand, Hu expressed a flexibility to negotiate on many issues of concern to Taiwan. On the other hand, he continued to refuse talks without preconditions and remained committed to Chinese reunification as an ultimate goal. While Hu Jintao gave some signs of being more flexible with regard to political relationships with Taiwan as in his 17 May Statement where he offered to address the issue of "international living space" for Taiwan, Hu's government remains firm in its position that the Mainland side will not tolerate any attempt by the Taiwanese government to declare de jure independence from China.

After the re-election of Chen Shui-bian in 2004, Hu's government changed tactics. Hu's government has conducted a no contact policy with the then Taipei administration due to Chen Shui-Bian and the DPP's independence leanings and repudiation of the 1992 consensus. The government maintained its military build-up against Taiwan, and pursued a vigorous policy of isolating Taiwan diplomatically. In March 2005, the Anti-Secession Law was passed by the National People's Congress, formalising "non-peaceful means" as an option of response to a declaration of independence in Taiwan.

Hu's government increased contacts with the Kuomintang (KMT), its fundamental foe since the start of the Communist Revolution in the 1920s, and still a major party in Taiwan. The relationship between the Communist Party of China (CPC) and Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang dates back to when the two parties twice co-operated in the Northern Expedition, only to become bitter foes during the Chinese civil war though they remained nominally allies during the war against Japan before hostilities resumed between them after 1945 and Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan in 1949. The increased contacts culminated in the 2005 Pan-Blue visits to mainland China, including a historic meeting between Hu and then-KMT chairman Lien Chan in April 2005.

On 20 March 2008, the Kuomintang won the presidency in Taiwan. It also has a majority in the Legislative Yuan. Compared to his predecessors, who often dictated conditions to Taiwan, Hu has been proactive in seeking ties with Taiwan, especially with the pro-unification Kuomintang party.

A series of historical meetings between the CPC and KMT have followed. On 12 April 2008, Hu Jintao held a historic meeting with ROC's then vice-president elect Vincent Siew as chairman of the Cross-strait Common Market Foundation during the Boao Forum for Asia. On 28 May 2008, Hu met with KMT chairman Wu Poh-hsiung, the first meeting between the heads of the CPC and the KMT as ruling parties. During this meeting, Hu and Wu agreed that both sides should re-commence official dialogue under the 1992 consensus. Wu committed the new government in Taiwan against Taiwanese independence Hu committed his government to addressing the concerns of the Taiwanese people in regard to security, dignity, and "international living space", with a priority given to allowing Taiwanese participation in the World Health Organization.

As well as the party-to-party channel, the semi-governmental dialogue channel via the Straits Exchange Foundation and the Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Straits is scheduled to re-open in June 2008 on the basis of the 1992 Consensus, with the first meeting held in Beijing. Both Hu and his new counterpart Ma Ying-jeou agree that the 1992 Consensus is the basis for negotiations between the two sides of the Taiwan strait. On 26 March 2008, Hu Jintao held a telephone talk with the US President George W. Bush, in which he as the leader of CPC for the first time admitted that "1992 Consensus" sees "both sides recognize there is only one China, but agree to differ on its definition." The first priority for the SEF-ARATS meeting will be opening of the three links, especially direct flights between mainland China and Taiwan.

Moral guidance

In response to the great number of social problems in China, in March 2006, Hu Jintao released the "Eight Honors and Eight Shames" as a set of moral codes to be followed by the Chinese people, and emphasized the need to spread the message to youth. Alternatively known as the "Eight Honors and Disgraces", it contained eight poetic lines which summarized what a good citizen should regard as an honor and what to regard as a shame. It has been widely regarded as one of Hu Jintao's ideological solutions to the perceived increasing lack of morality in China after Chinese economic reforms brought in a generation of Chinese predominantly concerned with earning money and power in an increasingly frail social fabric.

It has become a norm for Chinese communist leaders to make their own contributions to Marxist theory. Whether this is Hu's contribution to Marxist theory is debatable, but its general reception with the Chinese public has been moderate. Its promotion, however, is visible almost everywhere: in classroom posters, banners on the street, and electronic display boards for the preparation of the 2008 Olympics, and World Expo 2010 in Shanghai. The codes differ from the ideologies of his predecessors, namely, Jiang's Three Represents, Deng Xiaoping Theory, and Mao Zedong Thought in that the focus, for the first time, has been shifted to codifying moral standards as opposed to setting social or economic goals.

Personal life

Hu is married to Liu Yongqing, whom he met at Tsinghua University. They have two children together, Hu Haifeng and Hu Haiqing. Hu is the first PRC paramount leader to speak relatively unaccented Standard Chinese without strongly regional characteristics. He is well known as having a cautious attitude and a self-deprecatory personality. Unlike Wen Jiabao, the Premier, he has never granted a public one-on-one interview. He has been noted for his liking for table tennis and ballroom dancing. Hu is also said to possess a photographic memory that became evident in his high school days.

Notes

References

"Taiwan." Encyclopædia Britannica. 2008. Encyclopædia Britannica Online School Edition. 12 Aug. 2008. APA style: Taiwan. (2008). In Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 12 August 2008, from Encyclopædia Britannica Online School Edition

External links

Hu Jintao (ChinaVitae.com)

Hu Jintao calls for upholding Marxism (Xinhua)

Hu Jintao's political philosophies and policies by Dr. Robert Lawrence Kuhn

China's leader shows his stripes 2005 BBC article arguing Hu more hardline than he initially appeared

Requiem for Reform? Zhao Ziyang's vision of political change in China dims as Hu Jintao hardens the Party line (Time Asia)

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Category:1942 births Category:Chinese engineers Category:Communist rulers Category:Current national leaders Category:Leaders of the Communist Party of China Category:Living people Category:People from Taizhou, Jiangsu Category:Presidents of the People's Republic of China Category:Tsinghua University alumni Category:Tuanpai Category:Vice Presidents of the People's Republic of China

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Name	Angela Merkel
Office	Chancellor of Germany
President	Horst KöhlerChristian Wulff
Deputy	Franz MünteferingFrank-Walter SteinmeierGuido WesterwellePhilipp Rösler
Term start	22 November 2005
Predecessor	Gerhard Schröder
Office2	Minister for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety
Chancellor2	Helmut Kohl
Term start2	17 November 1994
Term end2	26 October 1998
Predecessor2	Klaus Töpfer
Successor2	Jürgen Trittin
Office3	Minister for Women and Youth
Chancellor3	Helmut Kohl
Term start3	18 January 1991
Term end3	17 November 1994
Predecessor3	Ursula Lehr
Successor3	Claudia Nolte
Office4	Member of the Bundestag
Term start4	2 December 1990
Constituency4	Stralsund-Nordvorpommern-Rügen
Predecessor4	Constituency established
Birth date	July 17, 1954
Birth place	Hamburg, West Germany(now Germany)
Party	Christian Democratic Union (1990–present)
Otherparty	Democratic Awakening (1989–1990)
Spouse	Ulrich Merkel (1977–1982)Joachim Sauer (1998–present)
Alma mater	University of Leipzig
Profession	Physical chemist
Religion	Protestantism
Signature	Angela Merkel Signature.svg }}

Angela Dorothea Merkel (; née Kasner; born 17 July 1954) is the current Chancellor of Germany (since 22 November 2005). Merkel, elected to the Bundestag (German Parliament) from Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, has been the chairwoman of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) since 2000, and chairwoman of the CDU-CSU (Christian Social Union) parliamentary coalition from 2002 to 2005.

From 2005 to 2009 she led a grand coalition with the Christian Social Union (CSU), its Bavarian sister party, and the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD), formed after the 2005 federal election on 22 November 2005. In the elections of 27 September 2009, her party, the CDU, obtained the largest share of the votes, and formed a coalition government with the CSU and the Free Democratic Party (FDP). Her government was sworn in on 28 October 2009.

In 2007, Merkel was also President of the European Council and chaired the G8. She played a central role in the negotiation of the Treaty of Lisbon and the Berlin Declaration. In domestic policy, health care reform and problems concerning future energy development have thus far been major issues of her tenure.

Merkel is the first female Chancellor of Germany. In 2007, she became the second woman to chair the G8, after Margaret Thatcher. In November 2011 she became the longest-serving leader of a G8 country. Forbes has named her as the most powerful woman in the world 2006 to 2009 and since 2011.

Early life

Merkel was born Angela Dorothea Kasner in Hamburg, West Germany, the daughter of Horst Kasner (6 August 1926 in Berlin-Pankow – 2 September 2011), a Lutheran pastor, and his wife, Herlind (born 8 July 1928 in Danzig/Gdańsk, as Herlind Jentzsch), a teacher of English and Latin. Her mother was once a member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany. Her grandparents on her mother's side, one of them being Masurian, lived in Elbing/Elbląg in East Prussia. Merkel stated that she is one quarter Polish in an interview with ''Der Spiegel'' in 2000. She has a brother, Marcus (born 7 July 1957), and a sister, Irene (born 19 August 1964).

Merkel's father studied theology in Heidelberg and, afterwards, in Hamburg. In 1954 her father received a pastorate at the church in Quitzow (near Perleberg in Brandenburg), which then was in East Germany, and the family moved to Templin. Thus Merkel grew up in the countryside north of Berlin. Gerd Langguth, a former senior member of Merkel's Christian Democratic Union, states in his book that the family's ability to travel freely from East to West Germany during the following years, as well as their possession of two automobiles, leads to the conclusion that Merkel's father had a "sympathetic" relationship with the communist regime, since such freedom and perquisites for a Christian pastor and his family would have been otherwise impossible in East Germany.

Like most pupils, Merkel was a member of the official, Socialist-led youth movement Free German Youth (FDJ). However, she did not take part in the secular coming of age ceremony Jugendweihe, which was common in East Germany, and was confirmed instead. Later, at the Academy of Sciences, she became a member of the FDJ district board and secretary for "Agitprop" (Agitation and Propaganda). Merkel herself claimed that she was secretary for culture. When Merkel's onetime FDJ district chairman contradicted her, she insisted that: "According to my memory, I was secretary for culture. But what do I know? I believe I won't know anything when I'm 80." Merkel's progress in the compulsory Marxism-Leninism course was graded only ''genügend'' (sufficient, passing grade) in 1983 and 1986.

Merkel was educated in Templin and at the University of Leipzig, where she studied physics from 1973 to 1978. While a student, she participated in the reconstruction of the ruin of the Moritzbastei, a project students initiated to create their own club and recreation facility on campus. Such an initiative was unprecedented in the GDR of that period, and initially resisted by the University of Leipzig. However, with backing of the local leadership of the SED party, the project was allowed to proceed. Merkel worked and studied at the Central Institute for Physical Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences in Berlin-Adlershof from 1978 to 1990. She learned to speak Russian fluently, and earned a statewide prize for her proficiency. After being awarded a doctorate (''Dr. rer. nat.'') for her thesis on quantum chemistry, she worked as a researcher and published several papers.

In 1989, Merkel got involved in the growing democracy movement after the fall of the Berlin Wall, joining the new party Democratic Awakening. Following the first (and only) democratic election of the East German state, she became the deputy spokesperson of the new pre-unification caretaker government under Lothar de Maizière.

Member of Bundestag and cabinet minister

At the first post-reunification general election in December 1990, she was elected to the Bundestag from the constituency Stralsund – Nordvorpommern – Rügen, which is coextensive with the district of Vorpommern-Rügen. This has remained her electoral district until today. Her party merged with the west German CDU and she became Minister for Women and Youth in Helmut Kohl's 3rd cabinet. In 1994, she was made Minister for the Environment and Nuclear Safety, which gave her greater political visibility and a platform on which to build her political career. As one of Kohl's protégées and his youngest cabinet minister, she was referred to by Kohl as "''mein Mädchen''" ("my girl").

Leader of the opposition

When the Kohl government was defeated in the 1998 general election, Merkel was named Secretary-General of the CDU. In this position, Merkel oversaw a string of Christian Democrat election victories in six out of seven state elections in 1999 alone, breaking the SPD-Green coalition's hold on the Bundesrat, the legislative body representing the states. Following a party financing scandal, which compromised many leading figures of the CDU (most notably Kohl himself, who refused to reveal the donor of DM 2,000,000 claiming he had given his word of honour and the then party chairman Wolfgang Schäuble, Kohl's hand-picked successor, who wasn't cooperative either), Merkel criticized her former mentor, Kohl, and advocated a fresh start for the party without him. She was elected to replace Schäuble, becoming the first female chair of her party, on 10 April 2000. Her election surprised many observers, as her personality offered a contrast to the party she had been chosen to lead; Merkel is a Protestant, originating from predominantly Protestant northern Germany, while the CDU is a male-dominated, socially conservative party with strongholds in western and southern Germany, and the Bavarian sister party, the CSU, has deep Catholic roots.

Following Merkel's election as CDU leader, she enjoyed considerable popularity among the German population and was favoured by many Germans to become Chancellor Gerhard Schröder's challenger in the 2002 election. However, she did not receive enough support in her own party and particularly its sister party (the Bavarian Christian Social Union, or CSU), and was subsequently out-manoeuvred politically by CSU leader Edmund Stoiber, to whom she eventually ceded the privilege of challenging Schröder; however, he squandered a large lead in the opinion polls to lose the election by a razor-thin margin. After Stoiber's defeat in 2002, in addition to her role as CDU chairwoman, Merkel became leader of the conservative opposition in the lower house of the German parliament, the Bundestag. Her rival, Friedrich Merz, who had held the post of parliamentary leader prior to the 2002 election, was eased out to make way for Merkel.

Merkel supported a substantial reform agenda concerning Germany's economic and social system and was considered to be more pro-market than her own party (the CDU); she advocated changes to German labour law, specifically removing barriers to laying off employees and increasing the allowed number of work hours in a week, arguing that existing laws made the country less competitive because companies cannot easily control labour costs at times when business is slow.

Merkel argued for Germany's nuclear power to be phased out less quickly than the Schröder administration had planned.

Merkel advocated a strong transatlantic partnership and German-American friendship. In the spring of 2003, defying strong public opposition, Merkel came out in favour of the U.S. invasion of Iraq, describing it as "unavoidable" and accusing Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of anti-Americanism. She criticised the government's support for the accession of Turkey to the European Union and favoured a "privileged partnership" instead. In doing so, she reflected public opinion that grew more hostile toward Turkish membership of the European Union.

Rise to power

On 30 May 2005, Merkel won the CDU/CSU nomination as challenger to Chancellor Gerhard Schröder of the SPD in the 2005 national elections. Her party began the campaign with a 21 point lead over the SPD in national opinion polls, although her personal popularity lagged behind that of the incumbent. However, the CDU/CSU campaign suffered when Merkel, having made economic competence central to the CDU's platform, confused gross and net income twice during a televised debate. She regained some momentum after she announced that she would appoint Paul Kirchhof, a former judge at the German Constitutional Court and leading fiscal policy expert, as Minister of Finance.

Merkel and the CDU lost ground after Kirchhof proposed the introduction of a flat tax in Germany, again undermining the party's broad appeal on economic affairs and convincing many voters that the CDU's platform of deregulation was designed to benefit only the rich. This was compounded by Merkel proposing to increase VAT to reduce Germany's deficit and fill the gap in revenue from a flat tax. The SPD were able to increase their support simply by pledging not to introduce flat taxes or increase VAT. Although Merkel's standing recovered after she distanced herself from Kirchhof's proposals, she remained considerably less popular than Schröder, and the CDU's lead was down to 9% on the eve of the election.

On 18 September 2005, Merkel's CDU/CSU and Schröder's SPD went head-to-head in the national elections, with the CDU/CSU winning 35.3% (CDU 27.8%/CSU 7.5%) of the second votes to the SPD's 34.2%. Neither the SPD-Green coalition nor the CDU/CSU and its preferred coalition partners, the Free Democratic Party, held enough seats to form a majority in the Bundestag, and both Schröder and Merkel claimed victory. A grand coalition between the CDU/CSU and SPD faced the challenge that both parties demanded the chancellorship. However, after three weeks of negotiations, the two parties reached a deal whereby Merkel would become Chancellor and the SPD would hold 8 of the 16 seats in the cabinet. The coalition deal was approved by both parties at party conferences on 14 November 2005. Merkel was elected Chancellor by the majority of delegates (397 to 217) in the newly assembled Bundestag on 22 November 2005, but 51 members of the governing coalition voted against her.

Reports had indicated that the grand coalition would pursue a mix of policies, some of which differ from Merkel's political platform as leader of the opposition and candidate for Chancellor. The coalition's intent was to cut public spending whilst increasing VAT (from 16 to 19%), social insurance contributions and the top rate of income tax.

Merkel had stated that the main aim of her government would be to reduce unemployment, and that it is this issue on which her government will be judged.

Chancellor of Germany

On 22 November 2005, Merkel assumed the office of Chancellor of Germany following a stalemate election that resulted in a grand coalition with the SPD. She was re-elected in 2009 with a larger majority and was able to form a governing coalition with the FDP.

Foreign policy

On 25 September 2007, Chancellor Angela Merkel met the Dalai Lama for "''private and informal talks''" in Berlin in the Chancellery amid protest from China. China afterwards cancelled separate talks with German officials, including talks with Justice Minister Brigitte Zypries.

''Der Spiegel'' reported that tensions between Chancellor Merkel and U.S. President Barack Obama were eased during a meeting between the two leaders in June 2009. Commenting on a White House Press Conference held after the meeting, ''Spiegel'' stated, "Of course the rather more reserved chancellor couldn't really keep up with [Obama's]...charm offensive," but to reciprocate for Obama's "good natured" diplomacy, "she gave it a go...by mentioning the experiences of Obama's sister in Heidelberg, making it clear that she had read his autobiography".

Russia

In 2006 Merkel expressed concern for overreliance on Russian energy, but she received little support from others in Berlin.

Iran

According to the news agency ''Mehr'' (as reported in the ''Mail & Guardian Online'' and ''Deutsche Welle'', quoting ''AFP''), in August 2006, Merkel received a letter from President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran. According to the reports, Merkel said that the letter contained "unacceptable" criticism of Israel and "put in question" the Jewish state's right to exist, and that therefore she would not formally respond to the letter.

Israel

On 16 March 2008, Merkel arrived in Israel to mark the 60th anniversary of the Jewish state. She was greeted at the airport by Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, an honor guard and many of the country's political and religious leaders, including most of the Israeli Cabinet. Until then, US President George W. Bush had been the only world leader Olmert had bestowed with the honor of greeting at the airport. Merkel spoke before Israel's parliament, the only foreigner who was not a head of state to have done so, although this provoked rumbles of opposition from Israeli MPs on the far right. At the time, Merkel was also both the President of the European Council and the chair of the G8. Merkel has supported Israeli diplomatic initiatives, opposing the Palestinian bid for membership at the UN. However, Merkel was offended when settlement building continued beyond the Green Line, and felt personally betrayed by the Israeli government's behavior.

Liquidity crisis

Following major falls in worldwide stock markets in September 2008, the German government stepped in to assist the mortgage company Hypo Real Estate with a bailout which was agreed on October 6, with German banks to contribute €30 billion and the Bundesbank €20 billion to a credit line.

On 4 October 2008, a Saturday, following the Irish Government's decision to guarantee all deposits in private savings accounts, a move she strongly criticized, Merkel said there were no plans for the German Government to do the same. The following day, Merkel stated that the government would guarantee private savings account deposits, after all. However, two days later, on 6 October 2008, it emerged that the pledge was simply a political move that would not be backed by legislation. Other European governments eventually either raised the limits or promised to guarantee savings in full.

India

In 2011, India became the first Asian country to hold a joint cabinet meeting with Germany when Merkel visited.

Failure of multiculturalism

In October 2010 Merkel told a meeting of younger members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party at Potsdam that attempts to build a multicultural society in Germany had "utterly failed", stating: "The concept that we are now living side by side and are happy about it does not work" and that "we feel attached to the Christian concept of mankind, that is what defines us. Anyone who doesn't accept that is in the wrong place here." She continued to say that immigrants should integrate and adopt Germany's culture and values. This has added to a growing debate within Germany on the levels of immigration, its effect on Germany and the degree to which Muslim immigrants have integrated into German society.

Approval

Midway through her second term, Merkel's approval plummeted in the country, resulting in heavy losses in state elections for her party. A poll in August 2011 found her coalition with only 36% support compared to a rival coalition which had 51%.

Cabinets

The first cabinet of Angela Merkel was sworn in at 16:00 CET, on 22 November 2005.

On 31 October 2005, after the defeat of his favoured candidate for the position of Secretary General of the SPD, Franz Müntefering indicated that he would resign as Chairman of the party in November, which he did. Ostensibly responding to this, Edmund Stoiber (CSU), who was originally nominated for the Economics and Technology post, announced his withdrawal on 1 November 2005. While this was initially seen as a blow to Merkel's attempt at forming a viable coalition and cabinet, the manner in which Stoiber withdrew earned him much ridicule and severely undermined his position as a Merkel rival. Separate conferences of the CDU, CSU, and SPD approved the proposed Cabinet on 14 November 2005

The second cabinet of Angela Merkel was sworn in on 28 October 2009.

Personal life

In 1977, Angela Kasner married physics student Ulrich Merkel. The marriage ended in divorce in 1982. Her second and current husband is quantum chemist and professor Joachim Sauer, who has largely remained out of the media spotlight. They first met in 1981, became partners later and married privately on 30 December 1998. She has no children, but Sauer has two adult sons from a previous marriage.

Honours

In 2006, Angela Merkel was awarded the Vision for Europe Award for her contribution toward greater European integration. In 2007, Merkel was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In March 2006, the Italian Presidency of the Council of Ministers gave the German Chancellor the recognition of ''Dama di Gran Croce Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana''.

She received the ''Karlspreis'' (Charlemagne Prize) for 2008 for distinguished services to European unity.

In January 2008, Merkel was awarded Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. She was also awarded the honorary doctorate from Leipzig University in June 2008, University of Technology in Wrocław (Poland) in September 2008 and Babeş-Bolyai University from Cluj-Napoca, Romania on 12 October 2010 for her historical contribution to the European unification and for her global role in renewing international cooperation. In March 2008 she received the B’nai B’rith Europe Award of Merit.

From 2006 to 2009, ''Forbes Magazine'' has named her the most powerful woman in the world.

''New Statesman'' named Angela Merkel in "The World's 50 Most Influential Figures" 2010.

On June 16, 2010, the ''American Institute for Contemporary German Studies'' at ''Johns Hopkins University'' in Washington D.C. awarded Chancellor Merkel its ''Global Leadership Award (AICGS)'' in recognition of her outstanding dedication to strengthening German-American relations.

On September 21, 2010, the Leo Baeck Institute, a research institution in New York City devoted to the history of German-speaking Jewry, awarded Angela Merkel the Leo Baeck Medal. The medal was presented by former US Secretary of the Treasury and current Director of the Jewish Museum Berlin, W. Michael Blumenthal, who cited Merkel's support of Jewish cultural life and the integration of minorities in Germany.

On 15 February 2011, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from U.S. President Barack Obama. The medal is presented to people who have made an especially meritorious contribution to the security or national interests of the United States, world peace, or cultural or other significant public or private endeavors.

On 31 May 2011, she received the Jawaharlal Nehru Award for the year 2009 from the Indian government. She received the award for International understanding.

Comparisons

As a female politician from a centre right party, and a scientist, Merkel has been compared by many in the English-language press to former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Some have referred to her as "Iron Lady", "Iron Girl", and even "The Iron Frau" (all alluding to Thatcher, whose nickname was "The Iron Lady"—Thatcher also has a science degree: an Oxford University degree in chemistry). Political commentators have debated the precise extent to which their agendas are similar. Later in her tenure, Merkel acquired the nickname "''Mutti''" (a familiar form of 'mother'), said by ''Der Spiegel'' to refer to an idealised mother figure from the 1950s and 1960s.

In addition to being the first female German chancellor and the youngest German chancellor since the Second World War, Merkel is also the first born after World War II, and the first with a background in natural sciences. She studied physics; her predecessors studied law, business or history or were military officers, among others.

Merkel topped Forbes magazine's list of "The World's 100 Most Powerful Women" in 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2011.

Controversy

Merkel has been criticised for being personally present and involved at the M100 Media Award handover to Danish cartoonist Kurt Westergaard. This happened at a time of fierce emotional debate in Germany over disparaging remarks about Muslim immigrants made by the former Deutsche Bundesbank executive Thilo Sarrazin. The Zentralrat der Muslime and the left party (Die Linke) as well as the German Green Party criticised the action by the centre-right chancellor. The ''Frankfurter Allgemeine'' newspaper wrote: "This will probably be the most explosive appointment of her chancellorship so far." Others have praised Merkel and called it a brave and bold move for the cause of freedom of speech.

In September 2010 due to a debate of integration, Merkel said to the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper that "Germans will see more mosques". In October 2010, following a speech by the President of the Federal Republic of Germany Christian Wulff during the German reunification day, she stated that "Islam is part of Germany".

Members of her cabinet and Merkel herself also support the idea of, and are already introducing, Islamic education and classes in schools.

Selected published works

References

Bibliography

Studies of the "Grand Coalition" of 2005–09 and the first Merkel government.

External links

Official Website of Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany Merkel's personal website Merkel on her party's website

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Name	Deng Xiaoping
Order	Chairman of the CPC Central Advisory Commission
1blankname	General Secretary
1namedata	Hu YaobangZhao Ziyang
Term	13 September 1982 – 2 November 1987
Predecessor	New office
Successor	Chen Yun
Order1	Chairman of the CPC Central Military Commission
Term1	28 June 1981 – 9 November 1989
Predecessor1	Hua Guofeng
Successor1	Jiang Zemin
Office2	Chairman of the Chinese National PCC
Term2	8 March 1978 – 17 June 1983
Predecessor2	Zhou Enlaivacant (1976–1978)
Successor2	Deng Yingchao
Office3	Member of theNational People's Congress
Constituency3	Beijing At-large (59–64,78–83)PLA At-large (83–97)
Term3	18 April 1959 – 21 December 196426 February 1978 – 19 February 1997
Order4	First Vice Premier of the People's Republic of China
Term4	17 January 1975 – 18 June 1983
Predecessor4	Lin Biao
Successor4	Wan Li
Premier4	Zhou EnlaiHua GuofengZhao Ziyang
Birth date	August 22, 1904
Birth place	Guang'an, Sichuan, China
Death date	February 19, 1997
Death place	Beijing, People's Republic of China
Nationality	Chinese
Party	Communist Party of China
Spouse	Zhang Xiyuan (张锡瑗) (1928–1929)Jin Weiying (金维映) (1931–1939)Zhuo Lin (卓琳) (1939–1997)
Children	Deng LinDeng PufangDeng NanDeng RongDeng Zhifang
Signature	Deng Xiaoping Sign.png }}

Deng Xiaoping (IPA: ; 22 August 1904 19 February 1997) was a Chinese politician, statesman, and diplomat. As leader of the Communist Party of China, Deng was a reformer who led China towards a market economy. While Deng never held office as the head of state, head of government or General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (historically the highest position in Communist China), he nonetheless served as the Paramount leader of the People's Republic of China from 1978 to 1992.

Born into a peasant background in Guang'an, Sichuan, Sichuan, China, Deng studied and worked in France in the 1920s, where he was influenced by Marxism. He joined the Communist Party of China in 1923. Upon his return to China he worked as a political commissar in rural regions and was considered a "revolutionary veteran" of the Long March. Following the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, Deng worked in Tibet and other southwestern regions to consolidate Communist control. He was also instrumental in China's economic reconstruction following the Great Leap Forward in the early 1960s. His economic policies were at odds with the political ideologies of Chairman Mao Zedong. As a result, he was purged twice during the Cultural Revolution but regained prominence in 1978 by outmaneuvering Mao's chosen successor, Hua Guofeng.

Inheriting a country fraught with social and institutional woes resulting from the Cultural Revolution and other mass political movements of the Mao era, Deng became the core of the "second generation" of Chinese leadership. He is considered "the architect" of a new brand of socialist thinking, having developed Socialism with Chinese characteristics and led Chinese economic reform through a synthesis of theories that became known as the "socialist market economy". Deng opened China to foreign investment, the global market, and limited private competition. He was generally credited with developing China into one of the fastest growing economies in the world for over 30 years and raising the standard of living of hundreds of millions of Chinese.

Early life and family

Deng was born into an ethnically Hakka Han family in Paifang village (牌坊村), Xiexin township (协兴镇), Guang'an County in Sichuan province, approximately 160 km from Chongqing (formerly spelled ''Chungking''). Deng's ancestors can be traced back to Meixian County in Guangdong Province, a prominent ancestral area for the Hakka people, and had been settled in Sichuan for several generations.

Deng's father, Deng Wenming, was a middle-level landowner and had studied at the University of Law and Political Science in Chengdu. His mother, surnamed Dan, died early in Deng's life, leaving Deng, his three brothers and three sisters. At the age of five, Deng was sent to a traditional Chinese-style private primary school, followed by a more modern primary school at the age of seven.

Deng's first wife, one of his schoolmates from Moscow, died when she was 24, a few days after giving birth to Deng's first child, a baby girl, who also died. His second wife, Jin Weiying, left him after Deng came under political attack in 1933. His third wife, Zhuo Lin, was the daughter of an industrialist in Yunnan Province. She became a member of the Communist Party in 1938, and married Deng a year later in front of Mao's cave dwelling in Yan'an. They had five children: three daughters (Deng Lin, Deng Nan and Deng Rong) and two sons (Deng Pufang and Deng Zhifang).

Like many leaders before the present generation, Deng was unable to speak Standard Chinese. He spoke only his native Sichuan dialect.

Education and early career

In the summer of 1919, Deng Xiaoping graduated from the Chongqing Preparatory School. He and 80 schoolmates travelled by ship to France (traveling steerage) to participate in the ''Mouvement Travail-Études'', (a work-study program in which 4,001 Chinese would participate by 1927). Deng, the youngest of all the Chinese students in the group, had just turned 15. Wu Yuzhang, local leader of the Mouvement Travail-Études in Chongqing, enrolled Deng and his paternal uncle, Deng Shaosheng, in the program. Deng's father strongly supported his son's participation in the work-study abroad program. The night before his departure, Deng's father took his son aside and asked him what he hoped to learn in France. He repeated the words he had learned from his teachers: "To learn knowledge and truth from the West in order to save China." Deng Xiaoping had been taught that China was weak and poor, and that the Chinese people must have a modern, Western education to save their country.

After studying French for a year, Deng departed with other Chinese students from Shanghai. On 19 October 1920 they arrived in Marseille, then traveled to Paris by train. He briefly attended middle schools in Bayeux and Châtillon, but he spent most of his time in France working; first at the Le Creusot Iron and Steel plant in central France, then as a fitter in the Renault factory in the Paris suburb of Billancourt, a fireman on a locomotive and a kitchenhand. He barely earned enough to survive. Many of these jobs had very harsh and dangerous working conditions, with workers frequently being injured. Deng would later claim that it was here where he got an initial feel for the evils of capitalist society.

Under the influence of older Chinese students in France (Zhao Shiyan, Zhou Enlai among others), Deng began to study Marxism and engaged in political dissemination work. In 1921 he joined the Chinese Communist Youth League in Europe. In the second half of 1924 he joined the Chinese Communist Party and became one of the leading members of the General Branch of the Youth League in Europe. In 1926 Deng traveled to the Soviet Union and studied at Moscow Sun Yat-sen University, where one of his classmates was Chiang Ching-kuo. Deng returned to China in 1927.

Return to China

In late 1927, Deng left Moscow to return to China, where he joined the army of Feng Yuxiang, a military leader in northwest China, which had requested assistance from the Soviet Union in its struggle with other local leaders in northern China. At that time, the Soviet Union, through the Comintern, an international organization supporting the communist movements in the world, supported the Communists' alliance with the Nationalists of the Kuomintang (KMT) party founded by Sun Yat-sen.

He came to Xi'an, the stronghold of Feng Yuxiang, in March 1927. He was part of the Fengtian clique to prevent the break of the alliance between the KMT and the Communists. This split was caused by Chiang Kai-shek, the successor of Sun Yat-sen, who started the persecution of the Communists, forcing them to flee areas controlled by the KMT. After the breakup of the alliance between communists and nationalists, Feng Yuxiang stood on the side of Chiang Kai-shek and the Communists who participated in their army, as Deng Xiaoping, were forced to flee. In 1929 Deng led the Baise Uprising in Guangxi province against the Kuomintang (KMT) government. The uprising failed and Deng went to the Central Soviet Area in Jiangxi province.

Political rise

Although Deng got involved in the Marxist revolutionary movement in China, the historian Mobo Gao has argued that "Deng Xiaoping and many like him [in the Chinese Communist Party] were not really Marxists but basically revolutionary nationalists who wanted to see China standing on equal terms with the great global powers. They were primarily nationalists and they participated in the Communist revolution because that was the only viable route they could find to Chinese nationalism."

Activism in Shanghai and Wuhan

After leaving the army of Feng Yuxiang in the northwest, Deng ended up in the city of Wuhan, where the Communists at that time had its headquarters. At that time, he began using the nickname "Xiaoping" and occupied prominent positions in the party apparatus. Participated in the historic emergency session on 7 August 1927 in which, by Soviet initiative the party dismissed its founder Chen Duxiu and Qu Qiubai became the secretary general. In Wuhan, Deng first established contact with Mao Zedong, then a little valued by militant pro-Soviet leaders of the party.

Between 1927 and 1929, Deng Xiaoping lived in Shanghai, where he helped organize protests that would be harshly persecuted by the Kuomintang authorities. The death of many Communist militants in those years led to a decrease in the number of members of the Communist Party, which enabled Deng Xiaoping to quickly move up the ranks. During this stage in Shanghai, Deng married for the first time with a woman he met in Moscow, Zhang Xiyuan.

Military campaign in Guangxi

Beginning in 1929, he participated in the struggle against the Kuomintang in Guangxi. The superiority of the forces of Chiang Kai-shek caused a huge number of casualties in the Communist ranks. The confrontational strategy of the party leadership was a failure that killed many militants. The response to this defeat catalyzed one of the most confusing episodes in the biography of Deng Xiaoping: in March 1931, he left the Communist Army seventh battalion to appear some time later in Shanghai. His official biography states that Deng Xiaoping had been charged by his superiors with deserting from the battle zone before fleeing to Shanghai, where there were leaders of the underground Communist Party. Although he was not punished in Shanghai, this episode in his biography remains unclear and would be used against him to question his devotion to the Communist Party during the Cultural Revolution era.

At the Jiangxi Soviet

After returning to Shanghai, Deng found out about the deaths of his wife and newborn daughter. In addition, he discovered that many of his former comrades had died as a result of Kuomintang crackdown against the Communists.

The campaigns against the Communists in the cities represented a setback for the party and in particular to the Comintern Soviet advisers, who saw the mobilization of the urban proletariat as the force for the advancement of communism. Contrary to the urban vision of the revolution, based on the Soviet experience, the Communist leader Mao Zedong saw the rural peasants as the revolutionary force in China. In a mountainous area of Jiangxi province, where Mao went to establish a communist system, the embryo of a future state of China under communism, which adopted the official name of Chinese Soviet Republic, but known as the "Jiangxi Soviet".

One of the most important cities in the Soviet zone, Ruijin, where Deng Xiaoping took over as secretary of Party Committee in the summer of 1931. A year later, in the winter of 1932, went on to play the same position in the nearby district of Huichang. In 1933 he became director of the propaganda department of the Provincial Party Committee in Jiangxi. In this time he married a second time, a young woman named Jin Weiying, whom he had met in Shanghai.

The successes of the Soviet in Jiangxi made the party leaders to travel to Jiangxi from Shanghai. The confrontation between the ideas of Mao and the party leaders and their Soviet advisers were increasingly tensed and the struggle for power between the two factions is the consequence of removal of Deng, akin to the ideas of Mao, its position in the propaganda department. Despite the internal strife within the party, the Soviet Jiangxi became the first successful experiment of communist rule in the rural China. It even issued stamps and paper money under the letterhead of the Soviet Republic of China, and the army of Chiang Kai-shek finally decided to attack the communist area.

The Long March

Surrounded by the more powerful army of the Republic of China, the Communists were forced to flee from Jiangxi in October 1934. Thus began the historic flight across the interior of China known as the Long March.

The Long March became the epic event that would mark a turning point in the development of Chinese communism. The evacuation from Jiangxi was difficult, because the Army of the Republic had taken positions in all areas occupied by the Communists. Advancing through remote and mountainous terrain, some 80,000 men (and some women) managed to escape Jiangxi starting a long journey through the interior of China which ended one year later when between 8,000 and 9,000 survivors reached the northern province of Shaanxi.

During the Zunyi Conference at the beginning of the Long March, the so-called 28 Bolsheviks, led by Bo Gu and Wang Ming, were ousted from power and Mao Zedong, to the dismay of the Soviet Union, had become the new leader of the Communist Party of China. The pro-Soviet Communist Party of China had ended and a new rural-inspired party emerged under the leadership of Mao. Deng Xiaoping had once again become a leading figure in the party, when the north ended up winning the civil war against the Kuomintang.

The confrontation between the two parties was temporarily interrupted, however, by the Japanese invasion, forcing the Kuomintang to form an alliance for the second time with the Communists to defend the nation against external aggression.

Japanese invasion

The invasion of Japanese troops in 1937 marked the beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War. During the invasion, Deng Xiaoping remained in the area controlled by the Communists in the north, where he assumed the role of political commissar of the three divisions that had been restructured Communist army. From September 1937 until January 1938, he lived in Buddhist monasteries and temples in the Wutai Mountains. In January 1938, he was appointed as Political Commissar of the 129th division of the Eighth Route Army commanded by Liu Bocheng, starting a long-lasting partnership with Liu.

Deng stayed for most of the conflict with the Japanese in the war front in the area bordering the provinces of Shanxi, Henan and Hebei, then traveled several times to the city of Yan'an, where Mao had established the basis for Communist Party leadership. In one of his trips to Yan'an in 1939, he married for the third and last time in his life, Zhuo Lin, a young native of Kunming, who, like other young idealists of the time, had traveled to Yan'an to join the Communists.

Resumed war against the Nationalists

After Japan's defeat in World War II, Deng Xiaoping traveled to Chongqing, the city in which Chiang Kai-shek established his government during the blue Japanese invasion, to participate in peace talks between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party. The results of those negotiations were not positive and military confrontation between the two antagonistic parties resumed shortly after the meeting in Chongqing.

While Chiang Kai-shek reestablished the government in Nanjing, the capital of the Republic of China, the Communists were fighting for control in the field. Following a threatening guerrilla tactics from their positions in rural areas to cities under the control of the government of Chiang, and their supply lines, the Communists were increasing the territory under its control, and incorporating more and more soldiers who deserted Nationalist army.

In the final phase of the war against the Nationalists, Deng Xiaoping again exercised a key role as political leader and propaganda as a Political Commissar of the 2nd Field Army commanded by Liu Bocheng, participated in the dissemination of ideas of Mao Zedong, turned into ideological foundation of the Communist Party. His work in political and ideological work, along with its status as a veteran of the Long March, placed him in a privileged position within the party to occupy positions of power after the Communist Party managed to defeat Chiang Kai-shek and founding a new communist state, the People's Republic of China.

Political career under Mao

As Mayor of Chongqing

On 1 October 1949, Deng Xiaoping attended the proclamation of the People's Republic of China in Beijing. At that time, the Communist Party controlled the entire north, but there were still parts of the south held by the Kuomintang regime. Deng Xiaoping became responsible for leading the conquest (or liberation, in the language commonly used in the PRC) of southwest China, in his capacity as first secretary of the Department of the Southwest. This organization had the task of managing the final takeover of that part of the country where still held by the Kuomintang, while, on the other hand, most of Tibet was a de-facto independent for many years.

The Kuomintang government after being forced to leave Guangzhou, and then had to establish a new provisional capital of Chongqing, the capital during the Japanese occupation. There, Chiang Kai-shek with his son Chiang Ching-kuo, former classmate of Deng Xiaoping in Moscow, were anxious to stop the Communist advance.

Under the political control of Deng Xiaoping, the Communist army won in Chongqing in late November 1949 and entered a few days later in Chengdu, the last bailiwick of power of Chiang Kai-shek. Since that time, Deng took over as mayor of Chongqing; in addition to being the leader of the Communist Party in the southwest, where the Communist army, became known as the People's Liberation Army, had to suppress resistance loyal to the old Kuomintang regime. In 1950, the new state also seized control over Tibet.

Deng Xiaoping would spend three years in Chongqing, the city where he had studied in his teenage years before going to France. In 1952, he moved to Beijing, where he occupied different positions in the central government.

Political rise in Beijing

In July 1952, Deng came to Beijing to assume the posts of Deputy Premier and Vice President of the Committee on Finance. Soon after, he occupied the posts of Minister of Finance and Director of the Office of Communications. In 1954, he left all these posts, except the Deputy Premier. In 1956, he become the General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee, Director of the Organization Department and Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission.

After officially supporting Mao Zedong in his Anti-Rightist Movement of 1957, Deng became General Secretary of the Secretariat and ran the country's daily affairs with then-President Liu Shaoqi. Having failed to advance the “social productive forces” in the Great Leap Forward through the “communist wind” and the “exaggeration wind”, Liu and Deng shift from an “ultra-leftist” approach to a “pragmatic” or right opportunist approach.

Both Liu and Deng had supported Mao in mass campaigns of the 1950s, in which they attacked the bourgeois and capitalists, and promoted the ideology of Maoism. However, the economic failure of the Great Leap Forward has brought criticism of the economic management capacity of Mao. Peng Dehuai was openly criticizing Mao, Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping, though more cautious, began to take charge of economic policy, leaving Mao in a symbolic role as an ideological figurehead. Mao agreed to cede the presidency of the People's Republic to Liu Shaoqi, while retaining his positions as party leader and the army.

In 1961, at the Guangzhou conference, Deng uttered what is perhaps his most famous quotation: "I don't care if it's a white cat or a black cat. It's a good cat as long as it catches mice." The earliest reference in Deng's Selected Works is his speech of July 7, 1962 on "How to Restore Agricultural Production". In this speech Deng argued for a pragmatic break with the People's Commune system -- boosting peasant incentives by leasing land to them. This was the contract responsibility system that triumphed only 16 years later after the Cultural Revolution. Deng said "Comrade Liu Bocheng often quotes the old Sichuan saying 'It doesn't matter whether it is a yellow cat or a black cat, a cat that catches mice is a good cat.' This Deng quote was later remembered in both China and foreign countries as being about black cats and white cats.

In 1963, Deng traveled to Moscow to lead a meeting of the Chinese delegation with Stalin's successor, Nikita Khrushchev. Relations between the People's Republic and the Soviet Union had worsened since the death of Joseph Stalin. After this meeting, no agreement was reached and the Sino–Soviet split was consummated; there was an almost total suspension of relations between the two major communist regimes of the time.

During these years, Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping began to implement economic reforms by reversing the policies of the Great Leap Forward. This led Mao to take action to regain control over the state. Appealing to his revolutionary spirit, Mao launched the Cultural Revolution, which encouraged the masses to root out the right-wing capitalists who infiltrated the party, among them are Liu and Deng.

Two purges

Mao feared that the reformist economic policies of Deng and Liu could lead to restoration of capitalism and end the Chinese Revolution. For this and other reasons, Mao launched the Cultural Revolution in 1966, during which Deng fell out of favor and was forced to retire from all his positions. In October 1969 he was sent to the Xinjian County Tractor Factory in rural Jiangxi province to work as a regular worker. In the four years there, Deng spent his spare time writing. He was purged nationally, but to a lesser scale than Liu Shaoqi.

During the Cultural Revolution, Deng Xiaoping and his family were targeted by Red Guards. Red Guards imprisoned Deng's son, Deng Pufang. Deng Pufang was tortured and forced out of the window in a four-story building, becoming a paraplegic.

Nonetheless, when Maoists were defeated, and after Lin Biao launched an abortive coup before being killed in an air crash, Deng Xiaoping (who had led a large field army during the civil war) became the most influential of the remaining army leaders. When Premier Zhou Enlai fell ill with cancer, Deng Xiaoping became Zhou's choice as successor, and Zhou was able to convince Mao to bring Deng Xiaoping back into politics in 1974 as First Vice-Premier, in practice running daily affairs. Deng focused on reconstructing the country's economy and stressed unity as the first step by raising production. He remained careful, however, to avoid contradicting Maoist ideology, at least on paper.

The Cultural Revolution was not yet over, and a radical leftist political group known as the Gang of Four, led by Mao's wife Jiang Qing, competed for power within the Communist Party. Dang Fei saw Deng as their greatest challenge to power. Mao, too, was suspicious that Deng would destroy the positive reputation of the Cultural Revolution, which Mao considered one of his greatest policy initiatives. Beginning in late 1975, Deng was asked to draw up a series of self-criticisms. Although Deng admitted to having taken an "inappropriate ideological perspective" while dealing with state and party affairs, he was reluctant to admit that his policies were wrong in essence. Deng's antagonism with the Gang of Four became increasingly clear, and Mao seemed to swing in the Gang's favour. Mao refused to accept Deng's self-criticisms and asked the party's Central Committee to "discuss Deng's mistakes thoroughly".

Zhou Enlai died in January 1976, to an outpouring of national grief. Zhou was a very important figure in Deng's political life, and his death eroded the little support within the Party's Central Committee that Deng had left. After he delivered Zhou's official eulogy at the state funeral, the Gang of Four, with Mao's permission, began the so-called ''Criticize Deng and Oppose the Rehabilitation of Right-leaning Elements'' campaign. Hua Guofeng, not Deng, was selected to become Zhou's successor. On 2 February, the Central Committee issued a Top-priority Directive, officially transferring Deng to work on "external affairs", removing Deng from the party's power apparatus. Deng stayed at home for several months, awaiting his fate. The political turmoil brought the economic progress Deng had laboured for in the past year to a halt. On 3 March, Mao issued a directive reaffirming the legitimacy of the Cultural Revolution and specifically pointed to Deng as an internal, rather than external, problem. This was followed by a Central Committee directive issued to all local party organs to study Mao's directive and criticize Deng.

Deng's political fortunes were dealt another blow following Qingming Festival, when the mass mourning of Premier Zhou on the traditional Chinese holiday sparked the Tiananmen Incident of 1976, an event the Gang of Four branded as counter-revolutionary and threatening to their power. Furthermore, the Gang deemed Deng the mastermind behind the incident, and Mao himself wrote that "the nature of things has changed". This prompted Dang Fei to remove Deng from all leadership positions whilst retaining his party membership.

Re-emergence

Deng gradually emerged as the de-facto leader of China following Mao's death in 1976. Prior to Mao's death, the only governmental position he held was that of First Vice Premier of the State Council. By carefully mobilizing his supporters within the party, Deng was able to outmaneuver Mao's appointed successor Hua Guofeng, who had pardoned him, then oust Hua from his top leadership positions by 1980. In contrast to previous leadership changes, Deng allowed Hua to retain membership in the Central Committee and quietly retire, helping to set the precedent that losing a high-level leadership struggle would not result in physical harm.

Deng repudiated the Cultural Revolution and, in 1977, launched the "Beijing Spring", which allowed open criticism of the excesses and suffering that had occurred during the period. Meanwhile, he was the impetus for the abolition of the class background system. Under this system, the CPC removed employment barriers to Chinese deemed to be associated with the former landlord class; its removal allowed Chinese capitalists to join the Communist Party.

Deng gradually outmaneuvered his political opponents. By encouraging public criticism of the Cultural Revolution, he weakened the position of those who owed their political positions to that event, while strengthening the position of those like himself who had been purged during that time. Deng also received a great deal of popular support. As Deng gradually consolidated control over the CPC, Hua was replaced by Zhao Ziyang as premier in 1980, and by Hu Yaobang as party chief in 1981. Deng remained the most influential of the CPC cadre, although after 1987 his only official posts were as chairman of the state and Communist Party Central Military Commissions.

Originally, the president was conceived of as a figurehead of state, with actual state power resting in the hands of the premier and the party chief, both offices being conceived of as held by separate people in order to prevent a cult of personality from forming (as it did in the case of Mao); the party would develop policy, whereas the state would execute it.

Deng's elevation to China's new number-one figure meant that the historical and ideological questions around Mao Zedong had to be addressed properly. Because Deng wished to pursue deep reforms, it was not possible for him to continue Mao's hard-line "class struggle" policies and mass public campaigns. In 1982 the Central Committee of the Communist Party released a document entitled ''On the Various Historical Issues since the Founding of the People's Republic of China''. Mao retained his status as a "great Marxist, proletarian revolutionary, militarist, and general", and the undisputed founder and pioneer of the country and the People's Liberation Army. "His accomplishments must be considered before his mistakes", the document declared. Deng personally commented that Mao was "seven parts good, three parts bad." The document also steered the prime responsibility of the Cultural Revolution away from Mao (although it did state that "Mao mistakenly began the Cultural Revolution") to the "counter-revolutionary cliques" of the Gang of Four and Lin Biao.

Opening up

In November 1978, after the country had stabilized following political turmoil, Deng visited Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore and met with Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, who advised Deng to open up and institute reforms, as well as to stop exporting Communist ideologies in Southeast Asia. Later, Deng sent tens of thousands Chinese to Singapore to learn about Singapore's success to help China develop.

Thanks to the support of other party leaders who had already recovered their official positions, in 1978 the rise to power of Deng was inevitable. Even though Hua Guofeng formally monopolized the top positions in the People's Republic, his position, with little support, was becoming increasingly difficult. In December 1978, during the Third Plenum of the 11th Central Committee Congress of the Communist Party of China, Deng Xiaoping took over the reins of power.

Since 1979, the economic reforms accelerated the capitalist type, while maintaining the Communist-style rhetoric. The commune system was gradually dismantled and the peasants began to have more freedom to manage the land they cultivate and sell their products on the market. At the same time, China's economy opened to foreign trade. On 1 January of that year, the United States went to diplomatically recognize the People's Republic of China, leaving the Taiwan authorities, and business contacts between China and the West began to grow. In late 1978, the aerospace company Boeing announced the sale of 747 aircraft to various airlines in the PRC, and the beverage company Coca-Cola had made public their intention to open a production plant in Shanghai.

In early 1979, Deng Xiaoping undertook an official visit to the United States during which he met President Jimmy Carter in Washington and several congressmen, and visited the Johnson Space Center in Houston, as well as the headquarters of Coca-Cola and Boeing in Atlanta and Seattle, respectively. With these visits so significant, Deng made it clear that the new Chinese regime's priorities were economic and technological development.

Sino-Japanese relations also improved significantly. Deng used Japan as an example of a rapidly progressing power that set a good example for China economically.

True to his famous phrase "do not care if the cat is black or white, what matters is it catches mice", spoken in 1961, and that had caused so much criticism, Deng Xiaoping, along with his closest collaborators, such as Zhao Ziyang, who in 1980 relieved Hua Guofeng as premier, and Hu Yaobang, who in 1981 did the same with the post of party chairman, took the reins of power and the purpose of advancing the "four modernizations" (economy, agriculture, scientific and technological development and national defense) put up an ambitious plan of opening and liberalization of the economy. The last position of power retained by Hua Guofeng, the chairman of the Central Military Commission, was taken by Deng in 1981.

From 1980, Deng led the expansion of the economy and in political terms, took over negotiations with the United Kingdom to return the territory of Hong Kong, meeting personally with British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. The result of these negotiations was the Sino-British Joint Declaration signed on 19 December 1984, states that the United Kingdom should return Hong Kong to China by 1997. The Chinese government pledged to respect the economic system and civil liberties of the then British colony for 50 years after the return. In 1987, Portugal, under pressure from the Chinese authorities agreed to arrange the return of its colony of Macau by 1999, with an agreement roughly equal to that of Hong Kong. The return of these two territories was based on political principle formulated by Deng himself called "one country, two systems", which refers to the coexistence under one political authority areas with different economic systems, communism and capitalism. Although this theory was applied to the cases of Hong Kong and Macau, it seems that Deng Xiaoping intended to also present it as an attractive option to the people of Taiwan for eventual incorporation of that island, claimed as Chinese territory.

In the economic sphere, the rapid growth faced several problems. On the other hand, the 1982 population census had revealed the extraordinary growth of the Chinese population, which already exceeded one billion people. Deng Xiaoping continued the plans initiated by Hua Guofeng to restrict birth to only one child, a reason why most couples could only have one child under the pain of administrative penalties. On the other hand, the increasing economic freedom was being translated into a greater freedom of opinion and critics began to arise with the system, including the famous dissident Wei Jingsheng, who coined the term "fifth modernization" to refer to democracy, missing element renewal plans of Deng Xiaoping. In late 1980s, dissatisfaction with the authoritarian regime and the growing inequalities caused the biggest crisis to Deng Xiaoping's leadership.

In October 1987, at the Plenary Session of the National People's Congress, Deng Xiaoping was re-elected as Chairman of Central Military Commission, but he resigned as Chairman of the Central Advisory Commission and he was succeeded by Chen Yun. He continued to chair and developed the reform and opening up as the main policy, put forward the three steps suitable for China's economic development strategy within 70 years: the first step, to double the 1980 GNP and ensure that the people have enough food and clothing, was attained by the end of the 1980s; second step, to quadruple the 1980 GNP by the end of the 20th century, was achieved in 1995 ahead of schedule; the third step, to increase per capita GNP to the level of the medium-developed countries by 2050, at which point, the Chinese people will be fairly well-off and modernization will be basically realized.

Deng, however, did little to improve relations with the Soviet Union, continues to adhere the Maoist line of the Sino–Soviet split era that the Soviet Union was a superpower equally as "hegemonic" as the United States, but even more threatening to China because of its geographic proximity.

Economic reforms

Improving relations with the outside world was the second of two important philosophical shifts outlined in Deng's program of reform termed ''Gaige Kaifang'' (''lit.'' Reforms and Openness). The domestic social, political, and most notably, economic systems would undergo significant changes during Deng's time as leader. The goals of Deng's reforms were summed up by the Four Modernizations, those of agriculture, industry, science and technology and the military.

The strategy for achieving these aims of becoming a modern, industrial nation was the socialist market economy. Deng argued that China was in the primary stage of socialism and that the duty of the party was to perfect so-called "socialism with Chinese characteristics", and "seek truth from facts". (This somewhat resembles the Leninist theoretical justification of the New Economic Policy (NEP) in the 20s, which argued that the Soviet Union had not gone deeply enough in to the capitalist phase and therefore needed limited capitalism in order to fully evolve its means of production) This interpretation of Maoism reduced the role of ideology in economic decision-making and deciding policies of proven effectiveness. Downgrading communitarian values but not necessarily the ideology of Marxism-Leninism himself, Deng emphasized that "socialism does not mean shared poverty". His theoretical justification for allowing market forces was given as such:

"Planning and market forces are not the essential difference between socialism and capitalism. A planned economy is not the definition of socialism, because there is planning under capitalism; the market economy happens under socialism, too. Planning and market forces are both ways of controlling economic activity."

Unlike Hua Guofeng, Deng believed that no policy should be rejected outright simply because it was not associated with Mao. Unlike more conservative leaders such as Chen Yun, Deng did not object to policies on the grounds that they were similar to ones which were found in capitalist nations.

This political flexibility towards the foundations of socialism is strongly supported by quotes such as:

Dr. Fengbo Zhang introduced Western Economics to China, provided methods and theory for Deng Xiaoping leadership promoting economic reform and decision-making.

Although Deng provided the theoretical background and the political support to allow economic reform to occur, it is in general consensus amongst historians that few of the economic reforms that Deng introduced were originated by Deng himself. Premier Zhou Enlai, for example, pioneered the Four Modernizations years before Deng. In addition, many reforms would be introduced by local leaders, often not sanctioned by central government directives. If successful and promising, these reforms would be adopted by larger and larger areas and ultimately introduced nationally. An often cited example is the household-responsibility system, which was first secretly implemented by a poor rural village at the risk of being convicted as "counter-revolutionary." This experiment proved very successful. Deng openly supported it and it was later adopted nationally. Many other reforms were influenced by the experiences of the East Asian Tigers.

This is in sharp contrast to the pattern in the ''perestroika'' undertaken by Mikhail Gorbachev in which most of the major reforms were originated by Gorbachev himself. The bottom-up approach of the Deng reforms, in contrast to the top-down approach of ''perestroika'', was likely a key factor in the success of the former.

Deng's reforms actually included the introduction of planned, centralized management of the macro-economy by technically proficient bureaucrats, abandoning Mao's mass campaign style of economic construction. However, unlike the Soviet model, management was indirect through market mechanisms. Deng sustained Mao's legacy to the extent that he stressed the primacy of agricultural output and encouraged a significant decentralization of decision making in the rural economy teams and individual peasant households. At the local level, material incentives, rather than political appeals, were to be used to motivate the labor force, including allowing peasants to earn extra income by selling the produce of their private plots at free market.

In the main move toward market allocation, local municipalities and provinces were allowed to invest in industries that they considered most profitable, which encouraged investment in light manufacturing. Thus, Deng's reforms shifted China's development strategy to an emphasis on light industry and export-led growth. Light industrial output was vital for a developing country coming from a low capital base. With the short gestation period, low capital requirements, and high foreign-exchange export earnings, revenues generated by light manufacturing were able to be reinvested in more technologically-advanced production and further capital expenditures and investments.

However, in sharp contrast to the similar but much less successful reforms in the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the People's Republic of Hungary, these investments were not government mandated. The capital invested in heavy industry largely came from the banking system, and most of that capital came from consumer deposits. One of the first items of the Deng reforms was to prevent reallocation of profits except through taxation or through the banking system; hence, the reallocation in state-owned industries was somewhat indirect, thus making them more or less independent from government interference. In short, Deng's reforms sparked an industrial revolution in China.

These reforms were a reversal of the Maoist policy of economic self-reliance. China decided to accelerate the modernization process by stepping up the volume of foreign trade, especially the purchase of machinery from Japan and the West. By participating in such export-led growth, China was able to step up the Four Modernizations by attaining certain foreign funds, market, advanced technologies and management experiences, thus accelerating its economic development. Deng attracted foreign companies to a series of Special Economic Zones, where foreign investment and market liberalization were encouraged.

Maoists consider these economic reforms to confirm Mao's somewhat paranoid belief that "capitalist roaders" - members of the Communist Party of China, who joined primarily to force through reforms toward capitalism - were indeed present within the Party, and therefore that the purges initiated were not entirely in vain. This is similar to the Stalinist view that the Perestroika reforms confirmed the presence of "revolutionary traitors" within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, therefore justifying the so-called Aggravation of Class Struggle under Socialism.

The reforms centered on improving labor productivity as well. New material incentives and bonus systems were introduced. Rural markets selling peasants' homegrown products and the surplus products of communes were revived. Not only did rural markets increase agricultural output, they stimulated industrial development as well. With peasants able to sell surplus agricultural yields on the open market, domestic consumption stimulated industrialization as well and also created political support for more difficult economic reforms.

There are some parallels between Deng's market socialism especially in the early stages, and Vladimir Lenin's NEP as well as those of Nikolai Bukharin's economic policies, in that both foresaw a role for private entrepreneurs and markets based on trade and pricing rather than central planning. An interesting anecdote on this note is the first meeting between Deng and Armand Hammer. Deng pressed the industrialist and former investor in Lenin's Soviet Union for as much information on the NEP as possible.

Role in the Tiananmen Square protests

The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 culminating in the June Fourth Incident were a series of demonstrations in and near Tiananmen Square in the People's Republic of China (PRC) between 15 April and 4 June 1989. Many socialist governments collapsed during the same year.

The protests were sparked by the death of Hu Yaobang, a reformist official backed by Deng Xiaoping and ousted by his enemies. Many people were dissatisfied with the party's slow response and relatively subdued funerary arrangements. Public mourning began on the streets of Beijing and universities in the surrounding areas. In Beijing this was centered on the Monument to the People's Heroes in Tiananmen Square. The mourning became a public conduit for anger against perceived nepotism in the government, the unfair dismissal and early death of Hu, and the behind-the-scenes role of the "old men". By the eve of Yaobang's funeral, the demonstration had reached 100,000 people on Tiananmen Square. While the protests lacked a unified cause or leadership, participants raised the issue of corruption within the government and some voiced calls for economic liberalization and democratic reform within the structure of the government while others called for a less authoritarian and less centralized form of socialism.

During demonstrations, Deng Xiaoping's pro-market ally, General Secretary Zhao Ziyang, supported demonstrators and distanced himself from the Politburo. Martial law was declared on 20 May by the socialist hardliner Li Peng, but no action was taken until 4 June. The movement lasted seven weeks. Soldiers and tanks from the 27th and 28th Armies of the People's Liberation Army were sent to take control of the city on 4 June. Many ordinary people in Beijing believed that Deng Xiaoping had ordered the intervention, but political analysts do not know who was actually behind the order. However, Deng's daughter defends the actions that occurred as a collective decision by the party leadership.

To purge sympathizers of Tiananmen demonstrators, the Communist Party initiated a one and half year long program similar to Anti-Rightist Movement. Old-timers like Dang Fei aimed to deal "strictly with those inside the party with serious tendencies toward bourgeois liberalization" and more than 30,000 communist officers were deployed to the task.

Zhao was placed under house arrest by socialist hardliners and Deng Xiaoping himself was forced to make concessions to anti-reform communists. He soon declared that "the entire imperialist Western world plans to make all socialist countries discard the socialist road and then bring them under the monopoly of international capital and onto the capitalist road". A few months later he said that the "United States was too deeply involved" in the student movement, referring to foreign reporters who had given financial aid to the student leaders and later helped them escape to various Western countries, primarily the United States through Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Although at first he made concessions to the socialist hardliners, he soon resumed his reforms after his 1992 southern tour. After his tour, he was able to stop the attacks of the socialist hardliners on the reforms through their "named capitalist or socialist?" campaign.

Deng Xiaoping privately told Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien that factions of the Communist Party could have grabbed army units and the country had risked a civil war. Two years later, Deng Xiaoping endorsed Zhu Rongji, a Shanghai Mayor, as a vice-premier candidate. Zhu Rongji had refused to declare martial law in Shanghai during the demonstrations even though socialist hardliners had pressured him.

After resignation and the 1992 southern tour

Officially, Deng decided to retire from top positions when he stepped down as Chairman of the Central Military Commission in 1989, and retired from political scene in 1992. China, however, was still in the ''era of Deng Xiaoping''. He continued to be widely regarded as the "paramount leader" of the country, believed to have backroom control. Deng was recognized officially as "the chief architect of China's economic reforms and China's socialist modernization". To the Communist Party, he was believed to have set a good example for communist cadres who refused to retire at old age. He broke earlier conventions of holding offices for life. He was often referred to as simply ''Comrade Xiaoping'', with no title attached.

Because of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, Deng's power had been significantly weakened and there was a growing formalist faction opposed to Deng's reforms within the Communist Party. To reassert his economic agenda, in the spring of 1992, Deng made his famous southern tour of China, visiting Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai and spending the New Year in Shanghai, in reality using his travels as a method of reasserting his economic policy after his retirement from office. On his tour, Deng made various speeches and generated large local support for his reformist platform. He stressed the importance of economic reform in China, and criticized those who were against further economic and openness reforms. Although there was a debate on whether or not Deng actually said it, his perceived catchphrase, "To get rich is glorious" (致富光荣), unleashed a wave of personal entrepreneurship that continues to drive China's economy today. He stated that the "leftist" elements of Chinese society were much more dangerous than "rightist" ones. Deng was instrumental in the opening of Shanghai's Pudong New Area, revitalizing the city as China's economic hub.

His southern tour was initially ignored by the Beijing and national media, which were then under the control of Deng's political rivals. Jiang Zemin showed little support. Challenging their media control, Shanghai's ''Liberation Daily'' newspaper published several articles supporting reforms authored by "Huangfu Ping", which quickly gained support amongst local officials and populace. Deng's new wave of policy rhetoric gave way to a new political storm between factions in the Politburo. President Jiang eventually sided with Deng, and the national media finally reported Deng's southern tour several months after it occurred. Observers suggest that Jiang's submission to Deng's policies had solidified his position as Deng's heir apparent. Behind the scenes, Deng's southern tour aided his reformist allies' climb to the apex of national power, and permanently changed China's direction toward economic development. In addition, the eventual outcome of the southern tour proved that Deng was still the most powerful man in China.

Deng's insistence on economic openness aided in the phenomenal growth levels of the coastal areas, especially the "Golden Triangle" region surrounding Shanghai. Deng reiterated that "some areas must get rich before others", and asserted that the wealth from coastal regions will eventually be transferred to aid economic construction inland. The theory, however, faced numerous challenges when put into practice, as provincial governments moved to protect their own interests. The policy contributed to a widening wealth disparity between the affluent coast and the underdeveloped hinterlands.

Death and reaction

After being disconnected from life supporting machines, Deng Xiaoping died on 19 February 1997, at age 92 from a lung infection and Parkinson's disease, but his influence continued. Even though Jiang Zemin was in firm control, government policies maintained Deng's political and economic philosophies. Officially, Deng was eulogized as a "great Marxist, great Proletarian Revolutionary, statesman, military strategist, and diplomat; one of the main leaders of the Communist Party of China, the People's Liberation Army of China, and the People's Republic of China; The great architect of China's socialist opening-up and modernized construction; the founder of Deng Xiaoping Theory".

Although the public was largely prepared for Deng's death, as rumors had been circulating for a long time, the death of Deng was followed by the greatest publicly sanctioned display of grief for any Chinese leader since Mao Zedong. However, in contrast, Deng's death in the media was announced without any titles attached (Mao was called the Great Leader and Teacher, Deng was simply "Comrade"), or any emotional overtones from the news anchors that delivered the message.

At 10 am on the morning of 24 February, people were asked by Premier Li Peng to pause in silence for three minutes. The nation's flags flew at half-mast for over a week. The nationally televised funeral, which was a simple and relatively private affair attended by the country's leaders and Deng's family, was broadcast on all cable channels. Jiang's tearful eulogy to the late reformist leader declared, "The Chinese people love, thank, mourn and cherish the memory of Comrade Deng Xiaoping because he devoted his life-long energies to the Chinese people, performed immortal feats for the independence and liberation of the Chinese nation." Jiang vowed to continue Deng's policies.

After the funeral, his organs donated to medical research, the remains were cremated, and his ashes were subsequently scattered at sea, according to his wishes. For the next two weeks, Chinese state media ran news stories and documentaries related to Deng's life and death, with the regular 7 pm ''National News'' program in the evening lasting almost two hours over the regular broadcast time.

Certain segments of the Chinese population, notably the modern Maoists and radical reformers (the far left and the far right), had negative views on Deng. In the year that followed, songs like "Story of Spring" by Dong Wenhua, which were created in Deng's honour shortly after Deng's southern tour in 1992, once again were widely played.

There was a significant amount of international reaction to Deng's death: UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Deng was to be remembered "in the international community at large as a primary architect of China's modernization and dramatic economic development". French President Jacques Chirac said "In the course of this century, few men have, as much as Deng Xiaoping, led a vast human community through such profound and determining changes"; British Prime Minister John Major commented about Deng's key role in the return of Hong Kong to Chinese control; Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien called Deng a "pivotal figure" in Chinese history. The Taiwan presidential office also sent its condolences, saying it longed for peace, cooperation, and prosperity. The Dalai Lama voiced regret.

Memorials

When compared to the memorials of other former CPC leaders, those dedicated to Deng have been relatively low profile, in keeping with Deng's pragmatism. Deng's portrait, unlike that of Mao, has never been hung publicly anywhere in China. Likewise, he was cremated after death, as opposed to being embalmed like Mao.

There are a few public displays of Deng in the country. A bronze statue of Deng was erected on 14 November 2000, at the grand plaza of Lianhua Mountain Park () of Shenzhen. This statue is dedicated to Deng's role as a great planner and contributor to the development of the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone, starting in 1984. The statue is high, with an additional 3.68-meter base. The statue shows Deng striding forward confidently. In addition, in many coastal areas and on the island province of Hainan, Deng is seen on large roadside billboards with messages emphasizing economic reform or his policy of One country, two systems.

Another bronze statue of Deng was dedicated 13 August 2004 in the city of Guang'an, Deng's hometown, in southwest China's Sichuan Province. The statue was erected to commemorate Deng's 100th birthday. The statue shows Deng, dressed casually, sitting on a chair and smiling. The Chinese characters for "Statue of Deng Xiaoping" are inscribed on the pedestal. The original calligraphy was written by Jiang, then Chairman of the Central Military Commission.

In Bishkek, capital of the Republic of Kyrgyzstan, there is a six-lane boulevard, wide and long, the ''Deng Xiaoping Prospekt'', which was dedicated on 18 June 1997. A two-meter high red granite monument stands at the east end of this route. The epigraph in memory of Deng is written in Chinese, Russian and Kirghiz.

See also

Deng Xiaoping Theory

References

;Footnotes

;Bibliography |year= 2008 |publisher= Pluto Press |location= London |isbn= 9780745327808|nopp=|ref=Gao08}} |year= 2006 |publisher= Harvard University Press |location= |isbn= 9780674023321 |nopp=|ref=Har08}} }}

Further reading

Evans, Richard. ''Deng Xiaoping and the Making of Modern China''

Spence, Jonathan D. "A Road is Made." In ''The Search for Modern China''. 310. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999. (ISBN 0-393-97351-4)

Spence, Jonathan D. "Century's End." In ''The Search for Modern China''. 725. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999. (ISBN 0-393-97351-4)

Yang, Benjamin and Yang, Bingzhang. ''Deng: A Political Biography''.M.E. Sharpe, 1998. ISBN 9781563247224

"Fifth Plenary Session of 11th C.C.P. Central Chinese Committee", ''Beijing Review'', No. 10 (10 March 1980), pp. 3–22, which describes the official Liu rehabilitation measures and good name restoration.

External links

Free searchable biography of Deng Xiaoping at China Vitae

Obituary, NY Times, 20 February 1997

Selected Works of Deng Xiaoping

Life of Deng Xiaoping

China's former 'first family' (from CNN)

China officially mourns Deng Xiaoping (from CNN)

Deng's Free Market Nightmare (Maoist criticism)

China 2002: Building socialism with Chinese characteristics (Communist Party USA)

China Daily Biography

;Video

Documentary 52': China on the Catwalk

10th Anniversary of the death of Deng Xiaoping: SINA

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Name	Jiang Zemin
Nationality	Chinese
Office	General Secretary of the Communist Party of China
Deputy
Term	24 June 1989 – 15 November 2002()
Predecessor	Zhao Ziyang
Successor	Hu Jintao
Office2	5th President of the People's Republic of China
Term2	27 March 1993 – 15 March 2003
Premier2	Li PengZhu Rongji
Vicepresident2	Rong YirenHu Jintao
Predecessor2	Yang Shangkun
Successor2	Hu Jintao
Office3	Chairman of the CPC Central Military Commission
Predecessor3	Deng Xiaoping
Successor3	Hu Jintao
Term3	9 November 1989 – 19 September 2004
Office4	Chairman of the PRC Central Military Commission
Predecessor4	Deng Xiaoping
Successor4	Hu Jintao
Term4	19 March 1990 – 8 March 2005
Office5	Member of theNational People's Congress
Constituency5	Shanghai At-large
Term start5	25 March 1988
Term end5	5 March 2008
Birth date	August 17, 1926
Birth place	Yangzhou, Jiangsu
Spouse	Wang Yeping
Alma mater	Shanghai Jiao Tong University
Profession	Electrical engineer
Party	Communist Party of China
Signature	Jiang Zhemin Sign.png }}

|t=|p=Jiāng Zémín|w=Chiang Tse-min|poj=Kang Tik-bîn|order=st|mi=}}

Jiang Zemin (Born on 17 August 1926) is the "Core of the third generation" of Communist Party of China leaders, serving as General Secretary of the Communist Party of China from 1989 to 2002, as President of the People's Republic of China from 1993 to 2003, and as Chairman of the Central Military Commission from 1989 to 2004.

Jiang Zemin came to power following Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, replacing Zhao Ziyang as CPC General Secretary. With the waning influence of Deng Xiaoping and the other members of Eight Elders due to old age, Jiang effectively became the "Paramount Leader" in the 1990s. Under his leadership, China experienced substantial developmental growth with reforms, saw the peaceful return of Hong Kong from the United Kingdom and Macau from Portugal, and improved its relations with the outside world while the Communist Party maintained its tight control over the government. Jiang has been criticized for being too concerned about his personal image at home, and too conciliatory towards Russia and the United States abroad. His contribution to the Marxist doctrine, a list of guiding ideologies by which the CPC rules China, is called the theory of the Three Represents, which has been written into the party and state constitutions .

Background and ascendancy

Jiang was born in the city of Yangzhou, Jiangsu. His ancestral home, a notion important in traditional Chinese society, was the Jiangwan Village (江湾村), Wuyuan County (婺源县) of the old Huizhou (徽州) in northern Jiangxi Province. This was also the hometown of a number of prominent figures in Chinese academic and intellectual establishments. Jiang grew up during the years of Japanese occupation. His uncle, Jiang Shangqing, had died fighting the Japanese in World War II and was considered to be a national hero. Jiang attended the National Central University (Department of Radio Engineering at Southeast University) in the Japanese-occupied Nanjing before being transferred to JiaoTong University in Shanghai (Shanghai Jiao Tong University and Xi'an Jiaotong University). He graduated there in 1947 with a Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering. He claimed that he joined the Communist Party of China when he was in college. After the establishment of the People's Republic of China, Jiang received his training at the Stalin Automobile Works in Moscow in the 1950s. He also had worked for Changchun's First Automobile Works. He eventually got transferred to government services, where he began to rise in prominence and rank, eventually becoming a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Minister of Electronic Industries in 1983. In 1985 he became Mayor of Shanghai, and subsequently the Party Chief of Shanghai.

Jiang received mixed reviews as mayor. Many of his critics dismissed him as a "flower vase", a Chinese term used to describe a decorative but useless person. Many credited Shanghai's growth during the period to Zhu Rongji . Jiang was an ardent believer, during this period, in Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms. In an attempt of curbing student discontent in 1986, Jiang recited the Gettysburg Address in English in front of a group of student protesters.

Jiang was described as having a passable command of several foreign languages, including Romanian, Russian, and English. One of his favorite activities was to engage foreign visitors in small talks on art and literature in their native language, in addition to singing foreign songs in the original language. He became friends with Allen Broussard, the African American judge who visited Shanghai in 1987 and Brazilian actress Lucelia Santos.

Jiang was elevated to national politics in 1987, automatically becoming a member of the Politburo of the CPC Central Committee because it is customarily dictated that the Party Chief of Shanghai would also have a seat in the Politburo. In 1989, China was in crisis over the Tiananmen Square protest, and the Central Government was in conflict on how to handle the protesters. (The opening policy, brought out by Deng Xiaoping, has been proved as a crucial and brilliant turning point in China's modern history, causing the economy to grow at an astonishing rate during the past decades.) In June, Deng Xiaoping dismissed liberal Zhao Ziyang, who was considered too conciliatory to student protestors. Jiang, at the time, was the Shanghai Party Chief, the top figure in China's new economic center. In an incident with the ''World Economic Herald'', Jiang closed down the newspaper, deeming it harmful. The handling of the crisis in Shanghai was noticed by Beijing, and then paramount Leader Deng Xiaoping. As the protests escalated and then Party-chief Zhao Ziyang was removed from office, Jiang was selected by the Party leaders as a compromise candidate over Tianjin's Li Ruihuan, Premier Li Peng, Chen Yun, and the retired elders to become the new General Secretary. At the time he was considered to be an unlikely candidate. Within three years Deng had transferred most power in the state, party and military to Jiang.

Early leadership

Jiang was elevated to the country's top job in 1989 with a fairly small power base inside the party, and thus, very little actual power. He was believed as simply a transitional figure until a more stable successor government to Deng could be put in place. Other prominent Party and military figures like Yang Shangkun and brother Yang Baibing were believed to be planning a coup. Jiang used Deng Xiaoping as a back-up to his leadership in the first few years. Jiang, who was believed to have a neo-conservative slant, warned against "bourgeois liberalization". Deng's belief, however, stipulated that the only solution to keeping the legitimacy of Communist rule over China was to continue the drive for modernization and economic reform, and therefore placed himself at odds with Jiang.

At the first meeting of the new Standing Committee of the Politburo, after the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, Jiang criticized the previous period as "hard on the economy, soft on politics" and advocated increasing political thought work. Anne-Marie Brady writes that "Jiang Zemin was a long time political cadre with a nose for ideological work and its importance. This meeting marked the beginning of a new era in propaganda and political thought work in China." Soon after, the Central Propaganda Department was given more resources and power, "including the power to go in to the propaganda-related work units and cleanse the ranks of those who had been supportive of the democracy movement."

Deng grew critical of Jiang's leadership in 1992. During Deng's southern tours, he subtly suggested that the pace of reform was not fast enough, and the "central leadership" (i.e. Jiang) had most responsibility. Jiang grew ever more cautious, and rallied behind Deng's reforms completely. In 1993, Jiang coined the new term "socialist market economy" to move China's centrally-planned socialist economy into essentially a government-regulated capitalist market economy. It was a huge step to take in the advancement of Deng's "Socialism with Chinese characteristics". At the same time, Jiang elevated many of his supporters from Shanghai to high government positions, after regaining Deng's confidence. He abolished the outdated Central Advisory Committee, an advisory body composed of revolutionary party elders. He became Chairman of the Central Military Commission in 1989, followed by his election to the Presidency in March 1993.

Secretaryship and Presidency

Deng Xiaoping died in early 1997, and China, emerging gradually out of the Deng-era reforms and the relative stability of the early 1990s, faced a myriad of economic and social problems. At Deng's funeral, Jiang delivered his eulogy. He had inherited a China rampant with government corruption, and regional economies growing too rapidly for the stability of the entire country. Deng's idea that "some areas can get rich before others" gave rise to an opening wealth gap between coastal regions and the hinterlands. The unprecedented economic growth had inevitably led to the closing of many state-owned enterprises (SOE's), and a staggering unemployment rate that hit 40% in some urban areas. Stock markets fluctuated greatly. The scale of rural migration into urban areas was unprecedented anywhere in the world, and little was being done to address an ever-increasing urban-rural wealth gap. Official reports put the figure on the percentage of China's GDP being moved and abused by corrupt officials at 10%. A chaotic environment of illegal bonds issued from civil and military officials resulted in much of the corrupted wealth to end up in foreign countries. Corruption levels had replicated, if not exceeded that of the Republican era in the 1940s. A surge in crime rates and the re-emergence of organized crime began to plague cities. A careless stance on the destruction of the environment furthered concerns voiced by intellectuals. Jiang's biggest aim in the economy was stability, and he believed that a stable government with highly centralised power would be a prerequisite, choosing to postpone political reform, which in many facets of governance exacerbated the on-going problems. The event was shown on Hong Kong television that night, an event regarded to be in poor taste outside China.

Since 1999, the media has also played an integral role in the crackdown of Falun Gong, which Falun Gong groups believe to be an act under the direction of Jiang himself, and has been heavily criticized by the West. Jiang reputedly came under conflict with the more moderate premier Zhu Rongji over how to contain the spiritual movement. According to ''International Advocates for Justice'', Falun Gong has filed the largest number of human rights lawsuits in the 21st century and the charges are among the most severe international crimes defined by international criminal laws. Ownby stated that, 54 civil and criminal lawsuits were under way in 33 countries in 2006 In December 2009, based on a case brought by Falun Gong followers in the country four years previously, Argentine Federal Judge Octavio de Lamadrid issued an arrest warrant for Jiang and Luo Gan for "crimes against humanity". The landmark case succeeded because provisions in Argentina's 1994 constitution allow Argentine courts to address human rights issues in other countries. The report does not state whether Luo or Jiang were represented.

Foreign policy

Jiang went on a groundbreaking state visit to the United States in 1997, drawing various crowds in protest from the Tibet Independence Movement to the supporters of chinese democracy movement. He made a speech at Harvard University, part of it in passable English, but could not escape questions on democracy and freedom. In the official summit meeting with US President Bill Clinton, the tone was relaxed as Jiang and Clinton sought common ground while largely ignoring areas of disagreement. Clinton would visit China in June 1998, and vowed that China and the United States were partners in the world, and not adversaries. When American-led NATO bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999, Jiang seemed to have put up a harsh stance for show at home, but in reality only performed symbolic gestures of protest, and no solid action. Much of Jiang's foreign policy was focused on international trade and economic integration. A personal friend of former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, Jiang strengthened China's economic stature abroad, attempting to establish cordial relations with countries whose trade is largely confined to the American economic sphere.

Economic development

Jiang did not specialize in economics, and in 1997 handed a most of the economic governance of the country to Zhu Rongji, who became Premier, and remained in office through the Asian financial crisis. Under their joint leadership, Mainland China has sustained an average of 8% GDP growth annually, achieving the highest rate of per capita economic growth in major world economies, raising eyebrows around the world with its astonishing speed. This was mostly achieved by continuing the process of a transition to a market economy. Strong party control over China was cemented by the PRC's successful bid to join the World Trade Organization and Beijing winning the bid to host the 2008 Summer Olympics.

Entrenching Three Represents

Before he transferred power to a younger generation of leaders, Jiang had his theory of Three Represents written into the Party's constitution, alongside Marxism–Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, and Deng Xiaoping Theory at the 16th CPC Congress in 2002. Although contradictory to Marxism and Maoism in many facets, it was also written into China's Constitution. Critics believe this is just another piece added to Jiang's cult of personality, others have seen practical applications of the theory as a guiding ideology in the future direction of the CPC. Largely speculated to step down from all positions by international media, rival Li Ruihuan's resignation in 2002 prompted analysts to rethink the man. The theory of Three Represents was believed by many political analysts to be Jiang's effort at extending his vision to Marxist–Leninist principles, and therefore elevating himself alongside previous Chinese Marxist philosophers Mao and Deng.

Gradual retirement

In 2002, Jiang stepped down from the powerful CPC Politburo Standing Committee and CPC General Secretary to make way for a "fourth generation" of leadership headed by Hu Jintao, marking the beginning of a transition of power that would last several years. Hu assumed Jiang's title as party chief, becoming the new general secretary of the Communist Party. Six out of the nine new members of Standing Committee at the time were considered part of Jiang's so-called "Shanghai Clique", the most prominent being Vice President Zeng Qinghong and First Vice Premier Huang Ju.

Although Jiang retained the chairmanship of the powerful Central Military Commission, most members of the commission are professional military men. ''Liberation Army Daily'', a publication thought to represent the views of the CMC majority, printed an article on 11 March 2003 which quotes two army delegates as saying, "Having one center is called 'loyalty', while having two centers will result in 'problems.'" This was widely interpreted as a criticism of Jiang's attempt to exercise dual leadership with Hu on the model of Deng Xiaoping.

Hu succeeded Jiang as president of the People's Republic of China on 15 March 2003. To the surprise of many observers, evidence of Jiang's continuing influence on public policy abruptly disappeared from the official media. Jiang was conspicuously silent during the SARS crisis, especially when compared to the very public profile of Hu and Wen Jiabao. It has been argued that the institutional arrangements created by the 16th Congress have left Jiang in a position where he cannot exercise much influence. Although many of the members of the Politburo Standing Committee are associated with him, the Standing Committee does not have command authority over the civilian bureaucracy.

On 19 September 2004, after a four-day meeting of the 198-member Central Committee, Jiang resigned as chairman of the CPC Central Military Commission, his last party post. Six months later he resigned his last significant post, chairman of the State CMC. This followed weeks of speculation that Hu Jintao's supporters in the Communist Party leadership were pressing Jiang to step aside. Jiang's term was supposed to have lasted until 2007. Hu also succeeded Jiang as the CMC chairman, but, in an apparent political defeat for Jiang, Xu Caihou, and not Zeng Qinghong was appointed to succeed Hu as vice chairman. This power transition officially marks the end of Jiang's era in China, which roughly lasted from 1993 to 2004.

Although Jiang has been seldom seen in public since giving up his last official title in 2004, he was with Hu Jintao on stage at a ceremony celebrating the 80th anniversary of the founding of the People's Liberation Army, and toured the Military Museum of the Chinese Peoples Revolution with Li Peng, Zhu Rongji, and other former senior officials. On 8 August 2008, Jiang appeared at the opening ceremony of the Beijing Olympics Games. He also stood beside Hu Jintao during 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China mass parade in October 2009.

Controversy

Disappearance

In December 2010, following Jiang's absence at the funeral of former Chinese foreign minister Huang Hua, rumours began circulating about his demise. On 1 July 2011, he was once again conspicuously absent, this time from the celebrations to mark the 90th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party. Within days, Internet rumours began circulating that Jiang had died, prompting Chinese censors to block searches for the words "Jiang Zemin", or even simply "Jiang". On 6 July Hong Kong media carried headlines that Jiang was "critically ill". That evening, terrestrial TV station ATV reported on its evening news bulletin that Jiang had died in Beijing. Xinhua, official state news agency, quoting “authoritative sources”, declared that overseas media reports of Jiang's death were "pure rumour".

Dissident website Boxun.com had reported on 6 July 2011 a source as saying: “Former leader Jiang died at midnight at Beijing 301 Hospital.” At approximately 3 pm, it issued a correction: “We reported that Jiang was in critical condition or died based on several sources, but a figure in Beijing called us at noon to inform us that his condition has improved.”

The disappearance of Jiang has been tied to the public re-appearance of notorious criminal Lai Changxing. Since 1999 Lai has been held by Canadian public security when he fled from Hong Kong to Canada. There was the possibility of Lai returning back to China in July 2011 due to extraditions related to his refugee status. Lai have said publicly in the past that if he returned to China:

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His corruption is known to have reached the top levels of the Chinese government. In 2001 Jiang Zemin even sent a letter to Canadian prime minister Jean Chretien that if Lai returned to China, he will be executed. In relation to the case, 14 people have already been executed, about 300 provincial officials have already been put on trial. Lai's brother have already died in prison. Since 2002 Beijing sent secret police to follow him wherever he went.

Legacy

Historians and biographers have disputed what can be accounted into "Jiang Zemin's legacy". Jiang himself had wanted his Three Represents theory, called an "important thought" on the Mainland, to become his ideological legacy. Although the theory has been codified into both the State and Party constitutions alongside Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory, its actual effect has yet to be assessed, and it seems to be losing ground to Hu Jintao's ''Scientific Development Concept'' and ''Harmonious Society'' ideologies within the party. Jiang has come under quiet criticism from within the Communist Party of China for focusing on economic growth at all costs while ignoring the resulting environmental damage of the growth, the widening gap between rich and poor in China and the social costs absorbed by those whom economic reform has left behind. By contrast, the policies of his successors, Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao have widely been seen as efforts to address these imbalances and move away from a sole focus on economic growth toward a broader view of development which incorporates non-economic factors such as health and the environment.

Domestically, Jiang's legacy and reputation is mixed. While some people attribute the period of relative stability and growth in the 1990s to Jiang's term, others argue that Jiang did little to correct mistakes resulting from Deng Xiaoping's economic reforms, leaving the next administration facing innumerable problems, some of which are too late to adjust. The fact that he arose to power as the direct beneficiary of the turmoils of 4 June has not been forgotten by many in China. Indeed, he is in many circles regarded as a political opportunist; the very model of a new breed of party members directly associated with the widespread corruption and cronyism that flourished during his tenure. His interference with high profile corruption investigations since stepping down from power, such as those involving Shanghai tycoon Zhou Zhengyi, has only helped to reinforce this perception.

Jiang's obsession with image has also spurred a trend of ''face projects'' around the country, with local governments lending enormous funds to large and mostly unnecessary construction projects. While his showy nature has often been considered charming and even charismatic by the west, in the relatively more conservative Chinese society it is often perceived as frivolous, pompous and lacking in character and substance. Jiang's Theory of Three Represents justified the incorporation of the new capitalist business class into the party, and changed the founding ideology of the CPC from protection of the peasantry and workers to that of the "overwhelming majority of the people", a euphemism aimed at including the growing entrepreneurial class. Conservative critics within the party have quietly denounced this as betrayal of the communist ideology, while reformers have praised Jiang as a visionary. Such a move, however, increasingly justified a newly found correlation between the business and ruling elites, thus significantly linking bureaucracy and financial gain, which critics argue fosters more corruption. Some have suggested that this is the part of Jiang's legacy that will last, at least in name, as long as the communists remain in power.

Many biographers of Jiang have noted that his government resembled an oligarchy as opposed to an autocratic dictatorship. Many of his policies have been attributed to others in government, notably Premier Zhu Rongji, whose tense relationship with Jiang was of widespread speculation, especially following Jiang's decision to suppress the Falun Gong movement. Jiang is often credited with the gains in foreign affairs during his term, but at the same time many Chinese criticize him for being too conciliatory towards the United States and Russia. The issue of Chinese reunification between the mainland and Taiwan gained ground during Jiang's term, as Cross-Strait talks led to the eventual Three Links after Jiang stepped down as Party general secretary. The Qinghai-Tibet railway began construction under Jiang.

See also

Politics of the People's Republic of China

History of the People's Republic of China (1989–2002)

''The Man Who Changed China: The Life and Legacy of Jiang Zemin'', Jiang's controversial biography by Robert Lawrence Kuhn

References

Further reading

Gilley, Bruce. "Tiger on the Brink: Jiang Zemin and China's New Elite." Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. 395pp. This was the first biography of Jiang to appear in the West. A comprehensive and highly readable journalistic account of Jiang's early years, his ascendancy within the Party bureaucracy, and his ultimate rise to power as Deng Xiaoping's successor in the wake of Tiananmen.

Kuhn, Robert Lawrence = ''The Man Who Changed China: The Life and Legacy of Jiang Zemin'', Random House (English edition) 2005. Century Publishing Group, Shanghai (Chinese edition) 2005. The book is a general biography of Jiang with a more favorable stance towards him.

*''China Daily'' = English language review of biography by Dr. Kuhn.

Lam, Willy Wo-Lap. "The Era of Jiang Zemin"; Prentice Hall, Singapore: 1999. General Jiang-era background information and analysis, not comprehensive biography.

External links

Swedes to sue ex Chinese president The Local Europe AB

China rejects Spain's 'genocide' claims Posted by Independent Minds

China warns Spain over Tibet lawsuit The New York Times

Biography at China Vitae, the web's largest online database of China VIPs

Falun Gong accuse Chinese leaders of genocide Expatica Communications

...investigation to proceed against China's ex-president, Jiang Zemin, and Luo Gan... The American Society of International Law

Landmark Genocide Lawsuit Against Jiang Zemin on Firm Ground Friends of Falun Gong USA January 2004

{{S-ttl|title = Secretary of the CPC Shanghai Committee |years = 1987 – 1989}} {{S-ttl|title = General Secretary of the Communist Party of China |years = 1989 – 2002}} {{S-ttl|title = Chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China |years = 1989 – 2004}} {{S-ttl|title = Mayor of Shanghai |years = 1984 – 1987}} {{S-ttl|title = Chairman of the Central Military Commission of the People's Republic of China |years = 1990 – 2005}} {{S-ttl|title = President of the People's Republic of China |years = 1993 – 2003}}

Category:1926 births Category:Communist rulers Category:Leaders of the Communist Party of China Category:Living people Category:Mayors of Shanghai Category:Nanjing University alumni Category:People from Yangzhou Category:Presidents of the People's Republic of China

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