Late Former Premier Zhu Rongji to Be Cremated on Tues
Zhu’s reforms cut tariffs, overhauled taxes and forced state firms to compete, but they also left an estimated 40 million workers jobless.
- When Zhu Rongji died in Beijing at age 97, Asia lost one of its finest public servants. As premier, he opened China to the World Trade Organization after nearly 15 years of negotiations.
- Zhu trained as an electrical engineer at Tsinghua University and governed with technical precision. He used WTO membership to anchor reforms, borrowing external pressure to force changes in banking and company law.
- His restructuring left an estimated 40 million state workers without jobs; critics called it surgery without anaesthesia. Zhu later took public responsibility for a school explosion that killed at least 42 people, demonstrating rare accountability.
- The fiscal system Zhu designed left local governments reliant on land sales, which later fueled the property crisis. Arguments over a record trade surplus of nearly $1.2 trillion reflect choices made after he left office in 2003.
- As founding dean of Tsinghua's economics school, Zhu trained the finance officials who served China for decades afterward. Institutions outlast tariff schedules, making his educational legacy more enduring than any trade agreement.
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14 Articles
Late former premier Zhu Rongji to be cremated on Tues
State media say the remains of late former premier Zhu Rongji will be cremated in Beijing on Tuesday. Zhu, who passed away on Wednesday at the age of 98, was also a Standing Committee member of the Political Bureau of the 14th and 15th Central Committees of the Communist Party of China. National flags will be flown at half-staff on Tuesday across the capital, including Tian'anmen Square and the Great Hall of the People. Border ports, seaports an…
The end of an era for China’s economy
Photo by World Economic Forum via Wikimedia Commons Zhu Rongji has passed away at the age of 97. He was not the only architect of the economic reforms that have made China a modern powerhouse — Deng Xiaoping, Zhou Enlai, Chen Yun, and others were all important — but Zhu was perhaps the most skilled,...
(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Kwon Sook-hee = The remains of former Premier Zhu Rongji (1928–2026), who was the "commander of China's economic reform," will be cremated on the 18th...
Zhu Rongji left Asia a blueprint — and it still works
When Zhu Rongji died in Beijing on August 12 at the age of 97, Asia lost one of the finest public servants of its modern era. He was the premier who opened China to the world, the plain-spoken technocrat who took his country into the World Trade Organization in December 2001 after almost 15 years […] The post Zhu Rongji left Asia a blueprint — and it still works appeared first on Asia Times.
Economy of Nonfiction. Zhu Rongji passed away this week. He led a process of profound reforms in China, marked by the state's efficiency and millions of public employees left on the street. The most important newspapers in the Western world this week spoke of him.
Zhu Rongji’s Death Rekindles Debate Over Human Cost of China’s Economic Reforms
The former premier helped transform China into a global manufacturing powerhouse, but the sweeping reforms also displaced tens of millions of state-sector workers, leaving a particularly painful legacy in the country’s industrial northeast
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