Former Chinese President Jiang Zemin dies aged 96

The announcement was made by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China, the State Council of the PRC, the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and the Central Military Commissions of the CPC and the PRC.

It was announced in a letter addressing the whole Party, the entire military and the Chinese people of all ethnic groups.

The letter says they proclaim with profound grief to the whole Party, the entire military and the Chinese people of all ethnic groups that our beloved Comrade Jiang Zemin died of leukaemia and multiple organ failure after all medical treatments had failed.

The letter says that Comrade Jiang Zemin was an outstanding leader enjoying high prestige acknowledged by the whole Party, the entire military and the Chinese people of all ethnic groups, a great Marxist, a great proletarian revolutionary, statesman, military strategist and diplomat, a long-tested communist fighter, and an outstanding leader of the great cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

He was the core of the CPC's third generation of central collective leadership and the principal founder of the Theory of Three Represents.

Born in July 1926, Jiang began his working life as deputy chief mechanic at the Number One Car Plant in Changchun, in China's northeast, before being plucked from obscurity to head the Communist Party after the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989.

Jiang gave up the job of Communist Party chief to Hu Jintao in November 2002, and the presidency in March 2003, and retired from his final post, as chairman of the Central Military Commission in September 2004, thus completing a historic leadership succession to a younger generation of leaders headed by Hu.

Rumours periodically circulated in leadership and diplomatic circles about Jiang, especially about arguments between him and current President Xi Jinping over policy which, with China's political system being as opaque and secretive as it is, are impossible to verify.

China Daily

Reuters