How did China change under Jiang Zemin?

Jiang Zemin was China's leader from 1990 to 2003. He rose to power in the wake of the 1989 Tiananmen Square killings, oversaw the handover of Hong Kong in 1997 and led his country until 2002, by which time it was one of the world's most powerful economies. He guided China into the World Trade Organization and allowed entrepreneurs into the party for the first time. Jiang handed over his leadership roles to Hu Jintao in 2002 and 2003.He remained an influential political figure almost a decade after stepping down.

Zemin was plucked from obscurity in 1989 to head the Communist Party after the bloody crackdown on democracy protests in Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Jiang replaced Zhao Ziyang, who was toppled by hardliners for supporting the student movement at Tiananmen Square. According to the Washington Post" "Deng hoped a clearer succession plan would add stability to the system; he appointed Jiang as his immediate successor and elevated Hu Jintao (President of China from 2002 to 2012) so that he could later take Jiang's place. Jiang built his camp of allies — called the “Shanghai gang” — drawing from his old base as the city's party chief. He was known for a showman's flair that remains rare among the party's mostly wooden personalities. Jiang was so successful at consolidating power during his last days in office that at least five of the nine members of the Standing Committee were thought to be his strong allies. Jiang refused to give up his chairmanship of China's military until Hu and others forced him out two years into Hu's presidency. “The best way to describe Jiang's style is like a gangster," said one party intellectual with close ties to senior officials from Jiang's era. “He believed in an eye for an eye, but also in the flip side as well, returning favor for favor. That's how he accumulated so much influence." [Source: Washington Post, November 5, 2012]

The political leaders after Deng--Jiang Zemin and Zhu Rongi--have been referred to as "third generation" leaders. The leaders that came after them--Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao--have been called the “forth generation” with Mao Zedong being the “first generation” leader and Deng Xiaoping being the ‘second generation."

Nearly all the Chinese who participated in the Long March and the Communist Revolution are gone. "Unlike Deng and the Elders who cut their political teeth on the battlefields fighting the Japanese or the Nationalists," wrote Steven Mufson in the Washington Post, "the next generation spent its formative years laboring within the apparatus of the Communist state as enterprise managers, central planners or party bureaucrats."

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