ABSTRACT
Jiang Zemin was serving the Chinese Communist Party’s secretary in Shanghai when he was elevated to the post of the general secretary of the CCP after the June Fourth crackdown, 1989. He was going to reign the Party for 13 years until 2002. His era was a lackluster one, with the first period dominating by the shadow of Deng Xiaoping, and the second period assisted mainly by Premier Zhu Rongji, as premier, in developing the Chinese economy. In the end, the legacy left by Jiang in the Party’s constitution is titled “Theory of the Three Represents”. The Theory is a wish list for the CCP as a governing party but certainly not an objective reality. This chapter attempts to assess the one-party rule of Jiang Zemin era, including the Theory. Indeed, the Chinese economy made a big stride in this period, being admitted into WTO in 2001. Internally, correcting the HuYaobang-Zhao Ziyang era’s political line of “One hand hard, One hand soft”, instead of a policy of “Both hands are hard” adopted. However, by the end of the 1990s, village election was implemented and spread to hundreds of villages. Eventually, it was no more than a façade. The election never goes beyond the village level. When Jiang stepped down, it disappeared. In the Jiang era, political dissent was not tolerated, organized opposition was suppressed, especially the crackdown on FaLunGong, and administrative reform was attempted. The hold on one-party rule, however, was never slackened.
