Former Chinese President Jiang Zemin passes away

KATHMANDU: Former Chinese President Jiang Zemin has passed away.

According to Chinese news agency Xinhua, Zemin passed away due to leukemia and organ failure in Shanghai at 12:13 pm on Wednesday.

“Comrade Jiang Zemin was the core of the Communist Party of China’s third generation of collective leadership and the principal founder of the Theory of Three Represents,” Xinhua wrote.

Under Jiang, China weathered the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis, joined the World Trade Organization in 2001 and won the bid to host the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, news agency Reuters wrote in its obituary. “Jiang counted among his proudest achievements the return of Hong Kong to China in 1997 after more than 150 years of British rule, even if the territory’s return had been brokered by paramount leader Deng Xiaoping in 1984,” it added.

Jiang handed the reins of the party and the government to Hu Jintao in 2002 which was China’s first bloodless leadership transition since the 1949 revolution, according to Reuters.

The former chief of Cina’s ruling Communist Party of China is survived by his wife, two sons and two grandchildren.