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As a child, Jiang Zemin lived in a family that greatly prized the value of education and also the need for families to live together harmoniously and with generosity. As he himself grew into manhood, there are numerous stories of how he supported family members and welcomed relatives into his tiny living space without a complaint. There are just as many stories of his bursting into song on the leas provocation. Sentimental Russian boat songs, patriotic Chinese anthems and Italian operatic arias were all apparently within his repertoire. This was part of his legendary and perhaps overstated ability to cause other people to become inspired and faithfully loyal to him. After an education that featured technical subjects, Jiang Zemin spent the early part of his working life as an engineer. He had joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) while at University in 1946 and had been a small part of the resistance against the Japanese during World War II. As a factory engineer, he apparently showed great leadership and technical competence and was able to upgrade productivity and safety standards alike. In 1955, Jiang Zemin travelled to the USSR for further technical training and it seems this visit reinforced his commitment to Marxist-Leninist thought. It also improved his technical abilities for he then was appointed to positions of leadership in various engineering research institutes. His role during the Cultural Revolution is not entirely clear - as a person of some authority, he would have been expected to produce a quota of people for self-criticism and censure but exactly how he managed this (or evaded it) has been either not established or not widely reported. Some of these were in comparatively obscure provincial areas and this may have helped to shield him from too much public scrutiny at a particularly dangerous time in history. Jiang Zemin's career began to move swiftly upwards from about 1980, when he was appointed vice-minister of the state commission on imports and exports. From that point, he was able both to develop his own ideas about economic development and also implement those ideas. He was subsequently involved in the designation of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in coastal regions that were so instrumental in leading the significant economic growth that has marked the country out in later decades.
The copyright of the article Jiang Zemin in East Asian History is owned by John Walsh. Permission to republish Jiang Zemin in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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