Jiang got his break to be party leader in the aftermath of the chaos of the student-led protests centered on Tiananmen Square in 1989. China was a pariah. Jiang was tasked with restoring stability within a divided Communist Party — and rehabilitating the image of a government that had ordered the military to fire on its own citizens.
In a 2000 interview, CBS journalist Mike Wallace called Jiang "a dictator, an authoritarian." And Jiang objected.
"Very frankly speaking, I don't agree with your point," the Chinese leader said in English. "Your way of describing what things are like in China is as absurd as what the Arabian Nights may sound like."
He wanted to allow entrepreneurs and capitalists to join the party, and his theory underpinned the ideological somersaults necessary to permit it.
"This has been instrumental in ensuring that the party remains relevant. But of course the nature of the party has changed tremendously," says Willy Lam, a senior fellow at U.S. think tank the Jamestown Foundation and one of the first people to write a biography of Jiang.
The move was controversial, but it ultimately ensured the party's continued grip on power by co-opting a rising class of self-made entrepreneurs and China's middle class. "It is no longer the party of the workers and peasants," Lam says. "What we have seen is a new aristocracy has risen up the ranks. It is now the party of the rich and powerful."
