Xi honors late leader Jiang Zemin, signals party unity amid economic challenges

Beijing held a formal commemoration on August 17th marking what would have been Jiang Zemin's 100th birthday. Xi Jinping presided over the event, using the occasion to draw a direct line between the former president's legacy and his own current leadership. The timing was deliberate: China faces mounting economic headwinds, and the party apparatus needed a moment to project internal cohesion.

Jiang Zemin led China from 1989 to 2004, a period that included the Tiananmen Square crackdown and the subsequent economic opening that transformed the country into a manufacturing powerhouse. He died in November 2022 at age 96. By invoking his memory now, Xi was reaching back to an era many Chinese citizens remember as more prosperous, more stable—a counterweight to present anxieties about growth, employment, and global standing.

Xi's remarks at the memorial emphasized what he called China's need for an "indomitable fighting spirit." He explicitly praised the 1989 crackdown, framing it as a necessary defense of party authority and national stability. This was not incidental rhetoric. The Communist Party's official messaging around the event positioned Jiang's legacy as a foundation for rallying the party faithful around Xi's governance agenda. The party was, in effect, asking its cadres and supporters to see continuity between Jiang's era and Xi's present—to understand the current leadership not as a departure but as a continuation of proven methods.

The economic context matters here. China's growth has slowed from the double-digit rates of the 1990s and 2000s. Youth unemployment has climbed. Real estate, long a pillar of the economy, is in distress. International tensions have mounted. Within this pressure, Xi needed to remind the party that strong central authority—the kind Jiang exercised—remains the answer. The memorial event became a tool for internal messaging: unity behind the leader, faith in the system, resolve in the face of difficulty.

What made this commemoration significant was not the praise of a deceased predecessor—that is routine in authoritarian systems—but the explicit invocation of Tiananmen and the framing of that event as a model for how to handle dissent and maintain control. Xi was signaling that he would not hesitate to use force to preserve party rule, just as Jiang had done. He was also reminding the party that such actions, once taken, could be rehabilitated and reframed as necessary and wise. The 1989 crackdown, once a source of international isolation and internal trauma, was being repositioned as a founding act of the modern Chinese state.

The party's messaging around the event made clear that Jiang's legacy was not being honored for its own sake. Rather, it was being deployed as a rhetorical tool to strengthen Xi's hand. Officials and state media framed the commemoration as a call for the party to unite behind current leadership. The implication was clear: those who questioned Xi's direction were, in effect, questioning the wisdom of Jiang's era—and by extension, questioning the party itself.

As China navigates economic slowdown and international scrutiny, this moment reveals how the party uses history. The past is not studied or debated; it is conscripted into service of the present. Jiang Zemin, who died less than a year ago, became a symbol not of his own achievements but of the virtues Xi wants to claim: decisiveness, strength, unwavering control. The 100th birthday commemoration was, in the end, less about remembering a leader than about reinforcing the legitimacy of the one in power now.