Then-Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji arrives at Hong Kong’s international airport on Nov. 18, 2002, for the opening of the World Congress of Accountants.
K.Y. Cheng/South China Morning Post via Getty Images
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Then-Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji arrives at Hong Kong’s international airport on Nov. 18, 2002, for the opening of the World Congress of Accountants.
K.Y. Cheng/South China Morning Post via Getty Images
At the age of 97, Zhu Rongji, a former premier of China, has passed away, with state media attributing his death to illness.
Known for his sharp wit and engineering background, Zhu was a key figure in the economic transformations of the 1990s. His efforts aimed to shift China from the disorder of the post-Mao era to a more open, market-oriented economy, while maintaining the Communist Party’s economic authority.
Even after stepping down in 2003, Zhu remained a contentious figure in China, a nation profoundly influenced by his policies. His reforms, which liberated vast labor and financial resources, generated significant wealth over three decades but also introduced future risks.
“As a policymaker, he embraced transforming China into a system more aligned with the West, meaning reformed, open, with limited state control,” said Charlene Barshefsky, a lawyer and former U.S. trade representative who negotiated with Zhu during China’s WTO entry talks.
To join the WTO, China first needed to secure preferential trade status with the U.S., requiring significant concessions and opening its economy to American companies. Zhu was under immense pressure to negotiate and expressed his stance clearly.
Zhu Rongji (left) answers reporters’ questions during a joint news conference with then-President Bill Clinton on April 8, 1999, in Washington, D.C.
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Zhu Rongji (left) answers reporters’ questions during a joint news conference with then-President Bill Clinton on April 8, 1999, in Washington, D.C.
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In 2000, the U.S. Senate voted to grant China this preferential trade status, leading to China’s WTO admission the following year. This move significantly boosted China’s emerging economy, transforming it into an export giant and attracting foreign businesses.
The lengthy 6 1/2-year process highlighted Zhu’s steely determination, though U.S. officials found him curious and adaptable. “This wasn’t just scripted dialogue; it involved substantial negotiation,” noted Kenneth Lieberthal, a former national security adviser for then-President Bill Clinton, who engaged with Zhu frequently during these talks.
Zhu was born in 1928 in Changsha, Hunan province. He graduated from Tsinghua University in Beijing, where he served as president of the student union, with a degree in electrical engineering, just as the Communist Party gained control in China. In October 1949, Zhu officially joined the Chinese Communist Party.
His blunt, say-it-like-it-is style got him in trouble
Zhu’s father died before he was born, and his mother passed away when he was 9. As an orphan, his need for survival shaped his resilient and forthright character.
“My defining characteristic is independent thought,” he declared to bureaucrats in 1987, shortly before becoming Shanghai’s mayor. “I say what I think.”
During the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, Zhu diverged from the typical denial narrative. “The recent event in Beijing is a historical fact, and no one can cover it up. The truth will always emerge,” he wrote in a Shanghai newspaper essay.
His candid nature often led to trouble. In 1958, he was labeled a “rightist” and expelled from the party for critiquing Mao Zedong’s policies but managed to retain a role in state planning. In 1970, during the Cultural Revolution, he was purged again and spent five years doing manual labor at a reeducation school.
After Mao’s death in 1976 and Deng Xiaoping’s rise, Zhu was rehabilitated and advanced through the bureaucracy, applying his engineering pragmatism.
“Regardless of your company’s origin, when you enter China, you receive equal treatment. I just want you to pay taxes,” he quipped to American businessmen in 1999, emphasizing China’s openness to foreign investment.
As a career state planner, Zhu rapidly adapted to the economic turbulence of the 1990s, as China wavered between capitalism and state socialism. As central bank governor, he curbed rampant inflation. As vice premier, he led a radical centralization of the tax system that spurred land sales and wealth creation, albeit with unsustainable debt levels.
Upon becoming premier in 1998, he boldly pledged to reform state banks within two years and state enterprises within three, garnering both supporters and detractors.
“No matter whether what lies ahead is a minefield or a bottomless abyss, I will carry out my duties until the last breath in my body,” he vowed.
Zhu’s most contentious legacy remains the restructuring of China’s state-owned enterprises. He shut down smaller, inefficient firms, resulting in about 30 million state workers losing their jobs.
Protests erupted throughout China, but Zhu remained steadfast, a stance viewed by some as callous.
“The central government decided that the laid-off worker problem could just be ignored and forgotten,” said Dorothy Solinger, a professor emeritus of political science at the University of California, Irvine, who studies migrant labor in China.
Zhu attempted to mitigate the layoffs’ effects by establishing a basic social welfare system still in place today and improving basic healthcare. However, some regions, especially in the northeast, never fully recovered economically.
“I think their children also have a problem because they miss out on the things that the better-off part of the population could do, such as hiring tutors or going on extracurricular activities, going to the better schools,” said Solinger. “It’s a growing underclass.”
Zhu handled criticism with composure. Unlike most Communist leaders, who relied on scripted responses, he enjoyed engaging the press candidly.
“He loved answering all the questions, no matter how tough or sensitive,” recalled Rose Luqiu, a former journalist for Hong Kong outlet Phoenix News who covered Zhu’s international visits for a decade. “The only way he refused to answer was using a quite humorous way to dodge the questions.”
His dark humor allowed him to endure harsh criticism from party ideologues, once joking during an anti-corruption campaign: “I have prepared 100 coffins: 99 for the corrupt officials and one for myself.”
Some of his reforms did not come to fruition, partly because Zhu never established the political networks needed to overcome internal party resistance. His attempts to reduce bad debt at state banks and reform the pension system faltered.
Chinese leaders and former leaders including Zhu Rongji (center) listen to The Internationale at the end of the closing session of the 19th Communist Party Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Oct. 24, 2017.
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Chinese leaders and former leaders including Zhu Rongji (center) listen to The Internationale at the end of the closing session of the 19th Communist Party Congress at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Oct. 24, 2017.
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Zhu “represented really a different time, a different era for China”
Zhu is now remembered fondly. Under the current leadership of Xi Jinping, China has become more nationalistic, state-focused, and less open to the world.
“I think that Zhu Rongji represented really a different time, a different era for China: the time when China wanted to find its way in what, due to that time, was the best possible way, which was to move towards Western-style economics, to move toward Western-style rules,” said Barshefsky, the former U.S. trade negotiator.
Zhu Rongji spent his final years at his home in the western hills of Beijing, enjoying Peking Opera and music, while quietly advising a new generation of Chinese technocrats, though not all heeded his counsel.
