Former Chinese President Jiang Zemin passed away shortly after noon (local time) in Shanghai on Wednesday at the age of 96, state media reported today.
The former leader had long suffered from health problems, and had barely appeared in public in recent years. According to the Xinhua agency, Jiang died of leukemia - a condition that had not been previously announced by the press or institutions - and multiple organ failure.
Born in the eastern town of Yangzhou in 1926, Jiang was appointed general secretary of the Communist Party in 1989, the year in which he also took the reins of the country, although he was not formally appointed as president until 1993.
Jiang is considered one of the major figures in Chinese history in recent decades. Under him in the 1990s, China continued the openness begun by his predecessor and mentor, Deng Xiaoping, and the country experienced breakneck growth that positioned it to become the world's second-largest economy.
Some of the great milestones of his mandate were the supervision of the peaceful return of Hong Kong, until then a British colony, under Chinese sovereignty in 1997, the entry of his country into the World Trade Organization in 2001 or the achievement of the Olympic Games 2008 for Beijing.
Amidst the shadows of his government, the repression with a hard hand of different collectives such as the Falun Gong religious sect in 1999 or a rampant increase in corruption among the ranks of the Communist Party.
The local press recalled that Jiang's last public appearance occurred on October 1, 2019, on the occasion of National Day and the celebration of the seventieth anniversary of the proclamation of the National Republic of China.
