HONG KONG—The death of former Chinese leader Jiang Zemin came at a sensitive moment for the ruling Communist Party that he led for more than a decade, days after resentment against the government’s strict Covid-19 controls flared into a wave of open dissent across the country.
Mr. Jiang died on Wednesday in Shanghai, where the 96-year-old succumbed to leukemia and multiple-organ failure, according to a Communist Party communiqué published by the government-run Xinhua News Agency.
Picked by then-paramount leader Deng Xiaoping to helm the party after the deadly crackdown on the Tiananmen Square protests, Mr. Jiang helped shore up an authoritarian system shaken by the 1989 pro-democracy movement and presided over China’s economic rise heading into the 21st century.
His death comes amid public expressions of anger against incumbent Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s Covid-19 policies, which some analysts describe as the biggest display of public dissent seen in China since the political upheaval that precipitated Mr. Jiang’s ascent more than three decades ago.
Since the weekend protests erupted against Mr. Xi’s zero-tolerance approach to Covid-19, the party has pressed to head off fresh unrest by maintaining a large police presence in major cities where demonstrations had taken place. Authorities used cellphone data and social media to track down protesters, while censors scrubbed dissenting voices from Chinese social media. A planned protest in Shenzhen was canceled on Tuesday after police deployed at several locations in the city, as were protests on Monday in Beijing and Shanghai.
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