Former Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji, Known for Forceful Reform Efforts, Dies at 98

Former Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji, one of the most prominent economic reformers during China’s economic rise, died in Beijing on Aug. 12 at the age of 98, according to Chinese state media.

Zhu, who served as premier from 1998 to 2003 after previously serving as Shanghai mayor and vice premier, was known for his blunt manner, technocratic approach to economic policy and aggressive stance against corruption. His tenure also brought some of the most disruptive economic reforms in modern Chinese history, including the restructuring of state-owned enterprises that left millions of workers unemployed.

Despite Zhu’s promotion of capitalist market economics, the Chinese Communist Party’s official obituary praised his life as “a life for revolution” and “devoted to the communist cause.”

Born in Changsha, Hunan, in 1928, Zhu studied electrical engineering at Tsinghua University and joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1949. In 1958, during the Anti-Rightist Movement, he was labeled a “rightist” and expelled from the Party. He spent years working in lower-level positions and performing manual labor before his political rehabilitation in 1978.

An economic reformer with a heavy hand

Zhu rose to prominence as an economic official and became mayor of Shanghai in 1988, where he helped promote the city’s development as a major commercial and financial center. In 1991, he became China’s vice premier, serving in that role for seven years until taking the premiership.

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As premier from 1998, he became one of the principal figures behind China’s push toward a more market-oriented economy, and had a significant role in negotiating the country’s ascension to the World Trade Organization (WTO).

His government restructured the country’s sprawling and often loss-making state-owned enterprises under the slogan of “grasping the large and letting go of the small.” The reforms transformed many large state companies into more commercially oriented enterprises, but came at a heavy social cost. The World Bank estimates that around 30 million SOE employees lost their jobs during the restructuring of the 1990s.

Zhu also oversaw reforms to China’s tax and financial systems, sought to curb inflation and helped establish a more commercially oriented banking sector. His government continued the opening of China’s economy to international trade and investment, culminating in China’s accession to the World Trade Organization in 2001. The World Bank has described the period as one in which the Chinese state increasingly made room for market forces, while WTO entry exposed Chinese companies to greater international competition.

To help China enter the WTO

Zhu personally played a major role in the WTO negotiations. In 1999, he visited Washington and proposed accelerating China’s entry by accepting many of the conditions demanded by American negotiators, helping break a lengthy deadlock in the talks.

Critically, Zhu assured the Clinton administration that China was well on the way to implementing more democratic reforms, and that Beijing’s economic rise would not pose a threat to the United States.

The reforms helped lay foundations for China’s subsequent emergence as a global manufacturing and trading power, but they also produced considerable hardship. The layoffs associated with SOE restructuring were particularly painful in China’s old industrial cities, where workers who had once enjoyed relatively secure employment suddenly had to find work in a rapidly changing economy.

Zhu’s economic approach was therefore markedly different from the popular image of a purely ideological Communist leader. He remained committed to one-party rule, but pursued economic policies that expanded the role of markets and foreign trade.

His economic role was largely overshadowed by the political leadership of Jiang Zemin, who had in the 1980s served as the CCP secretary of Shanghai.

In 1989, two years before Zhu became vice premier, Jiang had been selected as general secretary of the Communist Party, following the ouster of reformist Zhao Ziyang in the wake of the Tiananmen Square protests.

‘I have prepared 100 coffins’ to fight corruption

Zhu’s reputation for toughness was inseparable from his approach to corruption.

In 1998, at an anti-corruption meeting, he famously declared: “I have prepared 100 coffins, 99 for corrupt officials and one for myself.”

He was similarly blunt during the catastrophic Yangtze River floods of 1998. During an inspection of flood-control works in Jiujiang, Jiangxi Province, Zhu reportedly discovered serious construction defects in an embankment that had been described as “solid as a fortress.” According to a 2014 retrospective by China News, the premier angrily denounced the embankment as a “tofu-dreg project” and a “bastard project,” declaring: “History cannot be deceived.”

The phrase “tofu-dreg project” subsequently became widely used in China to describe shoddy construction and projects compromised by corruption.

Zhu acknowledged his reputation for temper. At a 2002 press conference, when a French journalist asked about his habit of “slamming tables and glaring,” he replied: “I have slammed tables, and I have glared,” before adding: “I never frighten ordinary people. I only frighten those corrupt officials.”

His public persona was captured in another declaration, made shortly after becoming premier in 1998: “Whether there is a minefield ahead or a bottomless abyss, I will move forward without hesitation, devote myself to the cause, and die in the line of duty.”

A different approach to Falun Gong

One of the more controversial episodes of Zhu’s premiership came in April 1999, when thousands of Falun Gong practitioners gathered in Beijing to petition the government.

Accounts of the episode differ over precisely what Zhu promised the practitioners and how the subsequent leadership discussions unfolded. But it is well documented that Zhu met representatives of the group on April 25, before the government launched its nationwide crackdown several months later.

Accounts from overseas Chinese-language media have portrayed Zhu as favoring a relatively conciliatory response and as being willing to address the practitioners’ concerns, in contrast to Jiang Zemin’s increasingly hardline position. Some reports claim that at a subsequent Politburo meeting Zhu said, “Let them practice,” prompting Jiang to angrily reject his take as something that would lead to “the end of the Party and the country.”

The events of April 25 have remained part of the debate over Zhu’s political legacy, particularly because his pragmatic, measured response contrasted with the sweeping persecution that followed at Jiang’s behest.

In July 1999, the CCP undertook a massive and violent campaign to stamp out Falun Gong — which had an estimated 70 million to 100 million adherents across the country — becoming one of the worst human rights violations in recent Chinese history.