Former Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji, the impatient and sharp-tongued reformer who drove China’s explosive economic boom by imposing drastic changes on the state industry in the 1990s and led the country into the World Trade Organization (WTO), died of an illness, state media reported on Wednesday. He was 97 years old.
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Zhu died in Beijing at 11:06 a.m. on Wednesday, the official Xinhua news agency reported. He is survived by his wife and two children.
After being sent to rural exile to do manual labor for praising reforms in other communist countries, Zhu pushed a dizzying series of changes as premier, China’s most important economic post, from 1998 to 2003 under then-President Jiang Zemin. He was also a member of the Politburo Standing Committee, the highest authority of the Chinese Communist Party, from 1992 to 2002.
Known as China’s “economic czar,” Zhu led the country in adopting market liberalization and globalization, steering its transition from a centralized and backward economy to a more open and market-friendly economy, CNN highlighted.
In a way, according to the TV network, his death marks the end of an era of greater economic optimism for many Chinese who witnessed their country’s profound transformation during his years of reforms. These reforms led to a huge reduction in poverty, the rise of a booming middle class, and the scramble of foreign companies to access the lucrative Chinese market.
Now, the world’s second-largest economy is losing momentum after decades of unprecedented growth, led by figures like Zhu, who boldly carried out the “reform and opening” vision of supreme leader Deng Xiaoping (1978-1989).
The ruling Communist Party’s official obituary praised Zhu’s role during a “crucial stage” when the country was “transitioning from a planned economy to a socialist market economy.” It also highlighted Zhu’s “deep affection” for the people.
“He emphasized that public officials must always remember they are public servants; they must have the courage to tell the truth without fear of offending others and give up special privileges, while striving to deliver tangible results for the people,” it stated.
The Financial Times points out that Zhu had a rare personal charisma at the pinnacle of Chinese power, “where bland rhetoric and vague statements are the norm.” Many Chinese who lived through the years when “Chief Zhu” held power could quote his most concise aphorisms.
At his first press conference as premier in 1998, he proclaimed his manifesto for a new era of reforms with words that many officials—and even some taxi drivers in small inland cities—soon memorized. “Whatever the future, a minefield or an abyss, I will not hesitate and will forge ahead, dedicating myself fully to my people and my country until the last day of my life,” he declared.
Frank, impatient, and often biting, he fought corruption. One evil that especially enraged him was “tofu construction,” referring to buildings so weakened by embezzlement of public funds that they risked collapse. He did not apologize for his public outbursts of anger, according to the newspaper.
“Yes, I bang tables and stare at people. If I couldn’t stare, I would be like a vegetable,” he said at a press conference. “I want to intimidate corrupt officials.”
His dark humor helped him endure intense periods of criticism from high-ranking ideologues within the Communist Party, even joking during an anti-corruption campaign: “I have prepared 100 coffins: 99 for corrupt officials and one for myself.”
Although Zhu’s personal style often drew attention, his achievements in office left an important legacy for China and the rest of the world. His management of economic reform began in 1993, when he was appointed vice premier and governor of the central bank.
One of Zhu’s greatest triumphs as vice premier was creating a tax system that forced local officials to hand over more revenue to Beijing. In 1996, he claimed he deserved a Nobel Prize in Economics for it.
“All the fundamental aspects of the so-called market economy, those reforms were carried out in the mid-1990s,” said Tao Wang, chief China economist at UBS Investment Bank, former IMF economist, and author of the book “Understanding the Chinese Economy.”
To join the WTO, China first needed to obtain preferential trade status with the United States, which in turn required tough concessions and opening its closed economy to American companies. Zhu was under enormous pressure to find a compromise and did not hesitate to express his opinion.
“Regardless of the country of origin of your company, upon arriving in China you must receive fair and equal treatment. I just want them to pay taxes,” he joked in 1999 before an audience of American businessmen, explaining that China was open to foreign investment.
In 2000, the U.S. Senate voted to grant China that preferential trade status, and the following year, China joined the WTO. The agreement represented a great opportunity for the nascent Chinese economy. The country became an export powerhouse, and foreign companies rushed to establish themselves in China.
The process allowed Zhu to show his firm character, although U.S. officials perceived him as inquisitive and flexible. “It was not just a speech. It was a constant exchange of concessions,” said Kenneth Lieberthal, China expert and national security advisor to then-President Bill Clinton. Lieberthal met with Zhu several times during the negotiations, details National Public Radio (NPR).
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China’s accession to the WTO in 2001, which granted it preferential access to the global trading system, resulted in exponential growth in Chinese trade with the rest of the world. In 2001, China’s total trade with the world was $510 billion. By the end of 2025, it stood at $6.5 trillion.
“From a policymaker’s perspective, (he) embraced the idea of a China whose economic system would be more compatible with the West. And by compatible, I mean deeply reformed, more open, less state-dominated, and with very limited state intervention,” said Charlene Barshefsky, lawyer and former U.S. trade representative who sat across from Zhu at the negotiating table for years to enable China’s entry into the World Trade Organization.
Born in the southern province of Hunan, Zhu graduated in electrical engineering from the prestigious Tsinghua University and got a job at the state planning agency.
Zhu’s father died before he was born, and his mother died when he was nine. Being an orphan, the need to survive helped forge his strong personality: tough and extremely direct.
“My distinctive trait is independent thinking,” he told bureaucrats in 1987, just before becoming mayor of Shanghai. “I say what I think.”
Like many of his generation, Zhu’s career was interrupted by the political upheavals of Mao Zedong’s era. He was expelled from the Communist Party in the late 1950s for criticizing government economic policies and was purged again during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. In 1970, he was sent to do five years of manual labor at a party re-education school.
After Mao’s death in 1976, Zhu was politically rehabilitated and allowed to rejoin the party. He rose through various economic posts until becoming mayor of Shanghai in 1988, where his work caught Deng Xiaoping’s attention.
As mayor in 1989, Zhu earned a reputation for moderation by calming protesters and committing not to call on the army. “He managed to defuse, with considerable subtlety, a tense political situation that could have led to localized violence or worse if the Army had deemed intervention necessary,” wrote Australian diplomat Shelley Warner in the 1991 book “Pro-Democracy Protests in China: Reports from the Provinces.”
When Chinese troops fatally shot pro-democracy protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989, Zhu did not resort to the usual propagandistic rhetoric denying the tragedy. “The recent event in Beijing is a historical fact, and historical facts cannot be covered up by anyone. The truth always comes to light,” he wrote in an essay published in a Shanghai newspaper.
In 1993, he was appointed vice premier to manage the economy and rose to premier five years later. Zhu controlled runaway inflation, reformed the monetary system, and helped the Chinese economy overcome the 1997 Asian financial crisis.
However, his aggressive reform policies were often controversial, CNN notes.
His drive to modernize inefficient state enterprises led to the dismissal of about 40 million workers. His attempt to bring China into the WTO was also criticized by officials who blamed him for making too many concessions; some even accused him of betraying the country.
Zhu tried to mitigate the impact of layoffs. He created a basic social welfare system that endures today and promoted basic healthcare, which had deteriorated in rural areas. However, some regions of China, especially in the northeast where workers depended on state employment in heavy industry, never fully recovered economically, wrote Emily Feng, who was NPR’s correspondent in China.
But Zhou Ruijin, former senior editor of the People’s Daily, the Communist Party’s official newspaper, suggested in a 2011 interview that the leaders likely to succeed then-President Hu Jintao and then-Premier Wen Jiabao had much to learn from Zhu.
“The era of Zhu Rongji was characterized by the promotion of major reforms and cultivated a group of brave entrepreneurs who were at the forefront of the market economy,” said Zhou, a proponent of rapid market reforms in the 1990s, in an interview with South Breeze Window, a historically pro-reform magazine published in southern China. “Today… there is still potential to take big steps in reform,” he noted.
In the foreword to an anthology of Zhu’s writings and speeches, the late U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger praised the former premier as “a sharp mind” who “faced one of the most important reform programs in modern history.”
Now Zhu is remembered with fond nostalgia. Under current Chinese leader Xi Jinping, the country has become more nationalist, more submissive to the state, and more closed to the outside world, NPR asserts.
“I think Zhu Rongji represented a very different era for China: a time when China sought its path in the best possible way, which was by approaching the economy and Western norms,” Barshefsky said.
Zhu Rongji spent the last years of his life at his home in Beijing, in the western hills of the Chinese capital. He was passionate about Peking Opera and spent much of his time listening to music, as well as discreetly advising some of the younger technocrats running China, although not all seem to have heeded him.
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