- China bids farewell to Jiang Zemin with sirens and a three-minute silence.
- President Xi Jinping and other top officials attended Jiang’s memorial service.
- Jiang led China out of isolation after the army crushed student-led pro-democracy uprisings in 1989.
China bids farewell to Jiang Zemin with sirens and a three-minute silence.
President Xi Jinping and other top officials attended Jiang’s memorial service in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People at 10 am local (02:00 GMT) on Tuesday.
Live coverage aired nationwide.
Jiang led China out of isolation after the army crushed student-led pro-democracy uprisings in 1989 and supported economic reforms that led to tremendous growth.
Engineer and former head of China’s largest city, Shanghai, Jiang led the Communist Party for 13 years until 2002. He oversaw Hong Kong’s return from British rule in 1997 and Beijing’s admission into the WTO in 2001.
The ruling Communist Party called him a “great proletariat revolutionary.”
“Jiang Zemin’s brilliant, glorious life” was reported by Xinhua on Tuesday.
During his 70-year revolutionary career, he remained unswervingly committed to communist values, the party, and the people.
In Yangzhou, Jiang’s hometown, 100 people came Tuesday to observe the silence.
Flags at half-staff in China and abroad.
Shanghai, Shenzhen, and Hong Kong’s Chinese Gold and Silver Exchange halted trading for three minutes. Some online games, including League of Legends, paused for a day.
Jiang died of leukemia and organ failure on November 30.
Xi and other top officials paid their respects to Jiang at a military hospital in Beijing before his body was cremated at the Babaoshan cemetery. CCTV showed Xi and others bowing to Jiang, whose spectacles were visible through a glass casket.
Former leader Hu Jintao, who was taken out of a Communist Party conference in October, attended.
Al Jazeera’s Patrick Fok, reporting from Hong Kong, called Jiang’s death “remarkable” because it comes so soon after the Communist Party Congress, where Xi was appointed general secretary for an unprecedented third term, and days after a wave of protests against the government’s “zero COVID” policy rocked the nation.
Beijing and Shanghai are on high alert, according to Fok.
Some Chinese are nostalgic for Jiang’s open and tolerant age.
“The Jiang era, while not prosperous, was more tolerant,” a Weibo user said after his passing.
“I’ve heard numerous complaints of him, but the fact that he let them proves he deserves appreciation,” commented another.
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