How to mourn Jiang Zemin
For China’s leader, another dilemma:
The deaths of Chinese Communist leaders are always fraught moments of political theater and especially so now with the passing of Jiang Zemin soon after a wave of public defiance on a scale unseen since Mr. Jiang came to power in 1989.
China’s sternly autocratic current leader, Xi Jinping, must preside over the mourning for Mr. Jiang, who died Wednesday at 96, while he also grapples with widespread protests against China’s exceptionally stringent COVID restrictions. The demonstrations have at times also boldly called for China to return to the path of political liberalization that seemed at least thinkable, even openly discussable, under Mr. Jiang during the 1990s.
How Mr. Xi orchestrates that feat — paying tribute to Mr. Jiang while preventing him from becoming a symbolic cudgel against Mr. Xi’s politics — will be another challenge for him in the coming weeks, as China tries to manage rising coronavirus cases and an economic slowdown.
“We mourn Comrade Jiang Zemin with a heavy heart and will turn our grief into strength,” Mr. Xi said Wednesday, according to an official summary of his comments to a visiting Laotian leader. The digital homepage of People’s Daily, the party’s main newspaper, turned to a mournful black and white.
“How they mourn his death may potentially provoke more anger, even though Jiang Zemin never enjoyed the popularity Hu Yaobang did,” said Lynette H. Ong, a political scientist at the University of Toronto who studies China, referring to the leader whose sudden death in 1989 ignited the Tiananmen Square protest movement. “At the very least, it will give the people a legitimate reason to congregate and mourn.”
Almost instantly, the announcement of Mr. Jiang’s passing brought a torrent of online tributes from Chinese people. Quite a few made thinly veiled, often sardonic comparisons between Mr. Jiang and Mr. Xi, whose authoritarian policies have taken censorship and ideological controls to new heights.
One comment on Weibo, a social media service in China, recalled when Mr. Jiang in 1998 used a megaphone to urge rescuers to stop flood barriers from breaking. The comment said Chinese society at the time was “vigorously advancing, high spirited, singing as we advanced into a new era.”
Many other remarks were not quite as effusive. As a leader, Mr. Jiang could be turgid and repressive when his political survival called for it, including against followers of the banned Falun Gong spiritual movement. He also was well known for his high opinion of himself and his equally high-hitched pants.
But Chinese people found plenty of reasons to think more fondly of Mr. Jiang’s time in high central office from 1989 to 2004, when China shifted from a post-Tiananmen political freeze to years of giddy, sometimes reckless and polluting growth. The party tightly controlled political life, but it allowed rights lawyers, commercial news outlets, combative dissidents and liberal-minded party scholars to participate in public debate — a modicum of freedom that does not exist now.
“Toad, we blamed you wrongly before; you’re the ceiling, not the floor,” said one comment, citing a popular nickname for Mr. Jiang, drawing on his squat figure and large glasses.
Another comment recalled 1997, when Chinese audiences were allowed to enjoy Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet in a movie with a relatively risqué story for that time in China. “Farewell,” said one popular comment marking Mr. Jiang’s death, “Thank you for letting us all watch Titanic that year.”
An announcement on mourning arrangements for Mr. Jiang indicated that a memorial service would be held and that — following party custom — international leaders would not be invited.