Jiang Zemin - Secretaryship and Presidency

Secretaryship and Presidency

Post Deng, China emerged from the reforms and the relative stability of the early 1990s, facing 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 ending up in foreign countries. Corruption levels had replicated, if not exceeded that of the Republican era in the 1940s. The re-emergence of organized crime and a surge in crime rates 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. Jiang continued pouring funds to develop the Special Economic Zones and coastal regions.

Beginning in 1996, Jiang began a series of reforms in the state-controlled media aimed at promoting the "core of leadership" under himself, and at the same time crushing some of his political opponents. The personality enhancements in the media were largely frowned upon during the Deng era, and had not been seen since Mao and Hua Guofeng's time in office in the late 1970s. The People's Daily and CCTV-1's 7 pm national news each had Jiang-related events as the front-page or top stories, a fact that remained until Hu Jintao's media administrative changes in 2006. He appeared casual in front of Western media, and gave an unprecedented interview with Mike Wallace of CBS in 2000 at Beidaihe. He would often use foreign languages in front of the camera, albeit not always comprehensible. In an encounter with a Hong Kong reporter in 2000 regarding the central government's apparent "imperial order" of supporting Tung Chee-hwa to seek a second term as Chief Executive of Hong Kong, Jiang branded the Hong Kong journalists as "too simple, sometimes naive" in English. The event was shown on Hong Kong television that night, an event regarded to be in poor taste outside China.

Tong asserts that among the main features of Jiang’s domestic policy was his campaign against the Falun Gong, which once had tens of millions of followers in China. On 25 April 1999 upwards of 10,000 Falun Gong adherents protested outside the Zhongnanhai government compound to request official recognition, in response to which Jiang declared the Falun Gong threat must be defeated. According to Human Rights Watch, Communist Party leaders and ruling elite were far from unified in their support for the crackdown. In June 1999, Jiang established an extralegal department, the 6-10 Office, to oversee the suppression Falun Gong. On 20 July, hundreds of Falun Gong adherents were allegedly abducted and detained. The suppression that followed was characterized a nationwide campaign of propaganda, as well as the large-scale arbitrarily imprisonment and coercive reeducation of Falun Gong practitioners, sometimes resulting in death. Under Jiang's leadership, the crackdown on Falun Gong became part of the Chinese political ethos of "upholding stability" – much the same rhetoric employed by the party during Tiananmen in 1989. The scope and intensity of the campaign has been described as "unrivaled" in recent history, and as being reminiscent of the extremes of the Cultural Revolution. Falun Gong practitioners outside China have filed dozens of largely symbolic lawsuits against Jiang Zemin and other Chinese officials alleging genocide and crimes against humanity. Although courts have refused to adjudicate the cases on the grounds of sovereign immunity in many instances, separate courts in Spain and Argentina indicted Jiang and other officials on the charge of torture and genocide in late 2009, asked for their arrest.