Jiang Zemin. China's leader during its early rise to global economic powerhouse. Head of the Shanghai technocratic leadership clique that pushed economic development over politics. Jiang was a grandfatherly face of a gentler more open China, with his goofy oversized glasses and penchant for reciting the Gettysburg Address in English. Of course, also able to play cut-throat one-party insider hardball, notably deftly sidelining the entire Beijing commie leadership cadre, sending the Beijing party head to jail and the dramatic suicide of the #2 BJ leader. One convenient aspect of a system based on corruption -- why else would communist officials cede their own power to businessmen? -- is that it's super-easy to sideline your political opponents with genuine indictments for taking bribes and abusing official positions for huge profits. And the Falun Gong movement was ruthlessly crushed -- despite seemingly embodying Jiang Zemin's call for a spiritual civilization -- essentially a dress rehearsal for the brutalization of the Uyghur Muslims the past 5+ years.
Genuine large-scale economic privatization occurred, such as slashing the bloated gov't SOE workforce, and transferring housing from govt ownership to individuals, providing ordinary Chinese with capital and triggering a massive housing renovation and building boom. (I advocate US public housing being given or sold very cheaply to current residents, to similarly give the poor significant assets and opportunity).
Real, albeit small and tentative, political reform occurred, including businessmen encouraged to join the communist party and national congress, while some multi-candidate elections were held in villages, a nascent small-scale democracy pilot project which was to be considered for cities later. It was a big deal when President Bill Clinton visited a top Chinese university, and his speech was broadcast live on Chinese national Tv (even if they failed to translate into Chinese the part about Tibetan repression -- remember when the US/West actually showed concern about Tibetan cultural genocide?)
Jiang's China was what the West thought they were getting when they welcomed China into WTO, wherein China would join the world economy and in the midst of growing wealth be able to gently slough off communism in favor of pluralism and democracy. Of course, things have taken a rather different path, where China's rise has led to increased authoritarian rule, political control over the economy, the revival of state-owned enterprise, wholesale surveillance and crackdowns on any dissent, military and economic aggression, super-rich businessmen being brought to heel, and even an unwillingness to follow WTO and other western-imposed rules (HK Basic Law, Law of the Sea, etc).
Jiang's legacy was somewhat thwarted by old school Deng XiaoPing favoring red princelings and party discipline over western-oriented technocrats. And in many ways, Xi JinPing's China is what Deng XiaoPing, a dedicated hard core communist since the 1920's, envisioned for China when in the span of a few years he both authorized the Tiananmen military crackdown and then pivoted to capitalist informed economic reform. Market-Leninism has transformed China into an increasingly wealthy communist nation, a hitherto unknown type of political entity (unless it has simply veered into fascism).
The timing of Jiang's death is also interesting, as historically Chinese have used an outpouring of support for a past leader as a means of challenging the current leaders. Will the current Covid protesters use Jiang's death and his preference for reform and openness to defiantly criticize the current policies? It's hard to stop folks from publicly mourning a renowned past communist leader ...
