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Mark O'Neill

NOVEMBER 18

A giant white statue of Mao Zedong still dominates the main hall of the cold and cavernous Military Museum overlooking Chang An Avenue in Beijing.

Behind Mao, are two paintings of two of his successors reviewing the troops in Tiananmen Square, in 1984 and 1999, on the 35th and 50th anniversary of the communist state.

One is of Deng Xiaoping and the other Jiang Zemin, whose era ended on Thursday, with his retirement after 13 years as the Party's general secretary.

The positioning of the portraits is the way Mr Jiang wants to be remembered, sharing this solemn room with Mao and Deng, even though, unlike them, he took no part in the decades of war with the Nationalists and Japanese that created the People's Republic.

Next to the museum are two Jiang monuments, the Millennium Tower, where he announced the arrival of the 21st century, and the imposing 12-storey building that is home to the party's military commission which he headed.

The party's 16th congress, which ended on Thursday, was a tribute to the Jiang years, with the meeting adopting into its constitution the 'Three Representatives' theory he invented.

Delegates rushed out of the Great Hall of the People to deliver prepared eulogies to television crews from their home provinces. State media bombarded the audience with tributes to Mr Jiang from the general public.

The communist media can never be accused of objectivity and even less so during a party congress. So, amid the hyperbole, bunting and patriotic songs, it is difficult to retain a balanced assessment of the Jiang era.

'During his 13 years, the economy made great strides,' said Liu Kangmin, who owes his two apartments, car and foreign travel to the computer business he set up after Mr Jiang took over. 'Living standards for millions went up and our choices in life increased greatly. We have more freedom than we used to.

'But how much of the credit for this should go to Old Jiang is hard to say. He took over a system that was already moving in a certain direction. He had good people under him. I do not think he was an innovator or imaginative,' he said.

'Where he failed was reform of the political system and tackling corruption. The party is as undemocratic and top-down as it was when he took over. He failed to deal with corruption because he refused to diminish the party's control on the issue.'

For the general public, this remains the biggest grievance against the party, just as it was in the spring of 1989, causing the protests that led to the military crackdown, the overthrow of the party secretary and Mr Jiang's sudden ascent to power.

'The public does not care about the Three Representatives or knows who they are,' said Wang Liguo, an elderly woman minding bicycles outside a Beijing subway station.

'It cares about the corruption of the leaders and their families. Their assets and business interests are not published. We know very little about them. How can we take seriously the leaders' promises to tackle corruption when their own families are so involved in business?' she said.

The public believes that, despite many high-profile arrests and sentences, the problem has only worsened during the Jiang era and that connections and politics, and not breaking the law, determine whether an official is detained.

For many, Mr Jiang's biggest mistake was his decision to ban Falun Gong in 1999, which led to the arrest of thousands of its believers, who were held in prisons and labour camps where hundreds of them died, and which involved the use of millions of man-hours of police and other security personnel.

Most people believe Mr Jiang made this decision on his own, stunned as he was driven in his black limousine with stained bullet-proof glass round Zhongnanhai on April 15, 1999, and saw the thousands of believers sitting in silent protest on the streets.

The advisers who agreed with him on the threat posed by the organisation urged a more nuanced response but Mr Jiang would have none of it and ordered it be crushed with the full force of the state.

'This decision ruined the lives of thousands of people, many of them innocents who were not against the government or the party,' a Chinese professor said.

'It also badly affected the chances of building a more civil society, by affirming that the authorities must control civil organisations.'

Mr Jiang leaves to his successor other dossiers which he failed to address - the widening wealth gap and the growth of an urban under-class, millions of workers laid off from state factories who are too old and unskilled to find new jobs and compete against younger and cheaper migrants from the countryside.

While these workers are supposed to receive a minimum living allowance from the local government, many do not. They survive on the breadline, an easy prey for crime and discontent.

In his two-hour speech to the congress on November 8, Mr Jiang devoted just a few sentences to these people, the losers in the reform process he oversaw during his 13 years in office.



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