Grand tribute, sombre farewell: How China remembered Jiang Zemin and Zhu Rongji over two days
China marked late President Jiang Zemin’s birth centenary on Monday (Aug 17) and bid farewell the next day to former Premier Zhu Rongji in two major ceremonies held just 24 hours apart.
Screengrabs of separate video footage by state broadcaster CCTV show the farewell ceremony for former Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji at Beijing’s Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery on Aug 18, 2026 (left), and the commemoration marking former Chinese President Jiang Zemin’s birth centenary at the Great Hall of the People on Aug 17, 2026.
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BEIJING: In the span of just two days, China moved from commemorating the life and legacy of a former leader to mourning the death of another.
On Monday (Aug 17), thousands of people gathered at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People to mark the birth centenary of late President Jiang Zemin, in a grand event filled with tributes to his political legacy and China’s transformation under his watch.
Just 24 hours later, the mood turned sombre. Funeral music played at Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery as President Xi Jinping and China’s other top leaders paid their final respects to former Premier Zhu Rongji, who died from illness on Aug 12 at the age of 97.
The back-to-back ceremonies brought two of the most recognisable figures from China’s reform era into the national spotlight in markedly different ways.
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Together, they offered a window into how Beijing chose to frame remembrance over two consecutive days – from the political messages and personalities assembled at Jiang’s Great Hall tribute to the wreaths, bows and half-mast flags marking Zhu’s farewell.
Behind those distinctions is a common thread in the official telling of both men’s legacies, say analysts – that in the story of China’s transformation, the Communist Party and its leadership remain firmly at the centre.
“From the Communist Party’s own perspective, something more fundamental comes first: the party’s leadership of the government and the country, and the political and social organisation that this leadership provides, which in its view makes development and progress possible,” said Wang Zichen, deputy secretary-general at the Center for China and Globalization (CCG), a Beijing-based think-tank.
A SOMBRE FAREWELL FOR ZHU
At around 9.30am on Tuesday, Xi and the six other members of the Communist Party’s apex Politburo Standing Committee walked slowly towards Zhu’s body inside the ceremonial hall at Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery, a burial ground in western Beijing traditionally used for senior party and state figures.
They stood in silence before the former premier, bowed three times and then shook hands with his family members one by one, according to state news agency Xinhua.
Vice-President Han Zheng also joined the farewell, while Xinhua reported that former President Hu Jintao sent a wreath expressing his condolences.
Above the hall hung a black banner bearing the words “deeply mourn Comrade Zhu Rongji” in white characters, with a portrait of Zhu beneath it. His body, covered by the red Communist Party flag, rested among flowers and cypress branches.
Other party and state leaders also attended or expressed condolences in various ways, Xinhua said, along with officials from central party and state bodies, Zhu’s friends and representatives from his hometown. Zhu’s remains were cremated later on Tuesday, Xinhua said.
The mourning extended well beyond Babaoshan.
National flags were lowered to half-mast at Tiananmen Square, the Zhongnanhai leadership compound, the Great Hall of the People and the foreign ministry, as well as at provincial-level party and government offices across China.
Flags were also lowered in Hong Kong and Macau, at border crossings, major ports and airports, and at Chinese embassies and consulates overseas.
At Tiananmen Square, visitors stopped to look and take photographs of the flag flying at half-mast.
Newspapers on sale in the capital carried Zhu’s image prominently on their front pages, while state television aired footage of the Babaoshan farewell.
No speech by Xi was reported at the farewell, with official coverage centred on the rituals of mourning and Zhu’s final send-off.
The treatment accorded to Zhu appeared consistent with established Communist Party conventions for the funerals of senior leaders, said Wang.
Beyond the formal rituals of state mourning, attention has also turned to how Zhu and his years in office are remembered. Zhu served as vice premier from 1991 to 1998 and premier from 1998 to 2003.
Zhu Jiangnan, an associate professor of politics and public policy at the University of Hong Kong (HKU), said the former premier is remembered by many Chinese as a “forceful technocratic reformer” who pushed through major market-oriented changes.
She cited state-owned enterprise reforms and China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001 among the changes associated with him.
Analysts previously told CNA that Zhu’s legacy is remembered not only through the reforms he pushed, but also through his blunt, pragmatic style and willingness to confront entrenched interests – qualities that continue to shape how the Jiang-Zhu period is viewed today.
A GRAND HALL FOR JIANG
A day earlier, the setting was the Great Hall of the People, where Jiang’s birth centenary was marked in a nationally broadcast commemoration.
A giant portrait of the former president dominated the backdrop of the main auditorium, above the dates “1926-2026”, as the ceremony opened with China’s national anthem at 10am on Monday.
Nearly 6,000 people attended, including senior officials, military personnel, veteran cadres, members of Jiang’s family and representatives from his hometown, according to Xinhua.
Alongside Xi and the current Politburo Standing Committee was a long line of former senior leaders.
They included former Premier Wen Jiabao and former Vice-President Zeng Qinghong, as well as former top political adviser Jia Qinglin, former Vice-President Wang Qishan, and former executive vice-premiers Li Lanqing and Zhang Gaoli.
Before the ceremony, Xi and other leaders met Jiang’s family and posed for a group photograph with them, state television reported.
During the proceedings, Xi delivered a roughly 40-minute speech that reviewed Jiang’s years at the top of the party, praising his role in maintaining political stability, advancing reform and opening, establishing the framework of the socialist market economy and leading China into the World Trade Organization.
He also repeatedly drew Jiang’s record into the political language of the present – stressing Communist Party leadership, strict party governance, crisis management and the need to balance development and security.
Xi praised Jiang’s ability to make decisive choices at critical moments and called on officials to prepare for “high winds, choppy waters, and even dangerous storms”.
Jiang served as Communist Party general secretary from 1989 to 2002 and as state president from 1993 to 2003. He died in 2022 at the age of 96, from leukaemia and multiple organ failure.
Hou Yichao, a researcher of China’s political economy and former research assistant at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), a Singapore think-tank, said much of Xi’s emphasis on party leadership, stability, crisis management and security was already present in his 2022 eulogy for Jiang and now appeared to have become a settled part of the former leader’s official legacy.
But Hou noted some updated emphases. Xi’s latest speech referred to economic globalisation developing “in the right direction”, language which Hou said reflects Beijing’s current concerns over deglobalisation and trade protectionism.
Xi also highlighted a stronger emphasis on livelihoods and welfare, including poverty alleviation and the re-employment of laid-off workers, which Hou said aligned closely with the current leadership’s “common prosperity” agenda.
The gathering ended with The Internationale, a socialist anthem traditionally associated with the international communist movement, after Xi called on the country to carry Jiang’s legacy forward in advancing China’s modernisation and national rejuvenation.
TWO MEN, ONE ERA
Notably, Zhu was not mentioned by name in the speech, even as Xi highlighted several achievements closely associated with the former premier’s work.
Wang from the Center for China and Globalization said that should be understood within the Communist Party’s official account of the period.
“Many of the economic achievements of that period are indeed closely associated with Zhu, particularly market-oriented reforms and WTO accession,” he said.
“But the official account places them within the broader record of the central leadership headed by Jiang,” Wang noted.
Jiang and Zhu served alongside each other at the top of China’s leadership from 1998 to 2003.
“Jiang is the core who represented and led that era politically, while Zhu was an exceptionally important leader of economic reform and government policy within that leadership.”
For the Communist Party, commemorating former leaders is also a way of defining how such periods should be remembered, said HKU’s Zhu Jiangnan.
“When the party commemorates and defines the legacy of a former leader, it is also writing the history of the Party-state, shaping the collective memory of the past, and building agreement among elites,” she said.
“How the current administration commemorates and defines the legacy of a former leader could be used as a reference in the future,” she added.
The burst of remembrance surrounding Jiang and Zhu has nevertheless extended beyond official ceremonies.
Hou from RSIS said recent retrospectives by writers and former journalists on Zhu’s reforms, alongside renewed discussion sparked by a 12-part documentary on Jiang that was aired by state broadcaster CCTV earlier this month, had prompted different generations to revisit the period.
Some scholars saw the documentary as a reminder of the difficulties involved in reform, while some Chinese born in the 1980s viewed it through memories of their own coming-of-age years, he said.
“Overall, the recent commemorations have reinforced a sense of continuity in China’s reform process and, to some extent, cut through the rose-tinted lens through which that past is often viewed,” Hou said.
But the boundaries of that reassessment remain visible.
Hou said official discourse and overwhelmingly positive accounts continue to dominate, while some online discussion of controversial policies or their negative consequences – including the plight of laid-off state-sector workers – had been censored.
The pull of the Jiang-Zhu years also reflects how different the circumstances surrounding China were at the time, Wang from CCG said, pointing to extraordinarily rapid economic growth and accelerating integration into a largely Western-led international economic system.
Today, China’s growth has slowed, geopolitical pressure has intensified and relations with the United States and other Western countries are markedly worse, he said.
“These differences are clearly visible and inevitably shape how people make comparisons,” Wang said.
Source: CNA/lg(ws)
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