Beijing —
Zhu Rongji, the steel-clad former prime minister whose bold economic reforms helped China emerge as a world power, has died. He was 97 years old.
Zhu, who served as prime minister from 1998 to 2003, died of illness in Beijing on Wednesday morning, state news agency Xinhua said. He leaves behind a wife and two children.
Known as China’s “economic czar,” Zhu led the country to embrace market liberalization and globalization, steering the country’s transition from a centrally planned backwater economy to a more open, market-friendly economy.
In some ways, his death marks the end of a more economically optimistic era for many Chinese who saw their country undergo significant transformation during the reformist era. These reforms led to a significant reduction in poverty, an explosion of the middle class, and a scramble for foreign companies to access the lucrative Chinese market.
The world’s second-largest economy is now losing momentum after decades of unprecedented growth under leaders like Zhu, who fearlessly implemented Supreme Leader Deng Xiaoping’s vision of “reform and opening up.”
The ruling Communist Party’s official memorial praised Zhu’s role in a “critical stage” in the country’s “transition from a planned economy to a socialist market economy.” He also noted Mr. Zhu’s “deep love” for the people.
“Government officials must always remember that they are public servants, have the courage to speak the truth without fear of hurting others, (and) avoid special privileges and make every effort to deliver tangible results for the people,” he stressed.
Zhu led China’s economic policy for more than a decade starting in the early 1990s, first as vice premier and then as prime minister under late leader Jiang Zemin, who died in late 2022.
A tenacious technocrat, Mr. Zhu pushed through a series of painful but necessary reforms to liberalize the economy, from overhauling the country’s fiscal and tax system to overhauling the bloated state sector.
Internationally, he is best known for leading China’s entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001, paving the way for double-digit growth that fueled China’s rise as a world power.
Mr. Zhu’s uncompromising approach, harsh pragmatism, and firm stance against corruption have won him admirers as well as enemies within the party, and earned him the nickname “Iron-fisted Prime Minister.” His sharp tongue, wit and temper also won him public support in a country accustomed to scripted speeches by officials.
“No matter whether there is a minefield or an abyss in front of me, I will move forward without hesitation and do my best until the day I die,” he famously said at a press conference in 1998, when he became Prime Minister, the country’s No. 2 leader.
Born in southern Hunan province, Zhu graduated from China’s prestigious Tsinghua University with a degree in electrical engineering and went on to work at the National Planning Bureau.
Like many of his contemporaries, Zhu’s early career was upended by the political upheavals of the Mao era. He was expelled from the Communist Party in the late 1950s for criticizing the government’s economic policies, and was purged again a decade later during Mao’s Cultural Revolution.
After Mao Zedong’s death, Mr. Zhu was politically rehabilitated and allowed to return to the party. He held a series of economic posts before becoming mayor of Shanghai in 1988, where his work caught the attention of Deng Xiaoping. In 1991, he was promoted to economic management as deputy prime minister and promoted to prime minister seven years later.
Mr. Zhu reined in rampant inflation, overhauled the monetary system, and steered China’s economy through the 1997 Asian financial crisis.
However, his aggressive reform policies were often controversial.
An estimated 40 million workers were laid off as a result of the push to rationalize inefficient state-owned enterprises. His efforts to bring China into the WTO came under fire from officials, who accused him of making too many concessions and some accused him of selling out the country.
In the end, Zhu proved his critics wrong. Analysts say joining the WTO will be a turning point in China’s integration into the global economy, opening the country to more global trade and investment and spurring unprecedented growth in the coming years.
In the preface to an anthology of Zhu’s writings and speeches, the late US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger praised the former prime minister as an “insightful mind” who “undertook one of the most important reform programs in modern history.”
