(Minghui.org) The Chinese authorities published an obituary on November 30, announcing the death of former Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Jiang Zemin.
The obituary claimed Jiang was an outstanding leader of communist China, yet it failed to mention some basic facts about him. For example, he rose to the top position for his active role in cracking down on the student democratic movement in 1989; he betrayed China by giving away land to Russia; he turned China into a corrupt state; and he undermined China’s moral foundation by persecuting Falun Gong.
Jiang Rewrote History
Jiang Shijun, the father of Jiang Zemin, was part of two traitorous organizations, “Peaceful National Salvation” and “Nanjin Temporary Maintenance Committee.” In later November 1940, he joined the government of Wang Jingwei in Nanjing City, Jiangsu Province—a traitorous puppet regime of the Japanese. According to Anything for Power: The Real Story of China’s Jiang Zemin published in 2005, Jiang Shijun was appointed as a vice-minister in the Ministry of Propaganda of the Wang government as well as a head member of the institution’s editorial committee. Along with other traitors such as the notorious writer Hu Lancheng, Jiang Shijun was given many awards by the invading Japanese for his “excellent” performance.
Jiang Shijun had high expectations for his son Jiang Zemin, so he sent him to “Nanjing University Young Leaders Training Session,” a special agents training facility of the puppet regime. The session was held under the name of Nanjing Central University, so Jiang Zemin and other trained special agents were actually admitted to Central University.
Because the invading Japanese army later monopolized the puppet regime’s opium business, Jiang Shijun and other officials at the Ministry of Propaganda organized student protests in 1943 against opium shops controlled by the Japanese. His son Jiang Zemin led the efforts.
The CCP has never openly acknowledged Jiang Zemin’s history of being born into a traitor’s family and being involved in special agent training. When he hired an American investment banker and author Robert Lawrence Kuhn to write a biography in 2005, Jiang changed that part of history by claiming he had joined student movements led by the underground CCP in 1943.
Jiang also fabricated another piece of information, claiming that he was adopted by his uncle Jiang Shangqing, a CCP member, at age 13. Few people knew Jiang Shangqing was already dead at the time, but this “adoption” lie nonetheless covered up Jiang’s traitorous legacy.
Betraying China as a KGB Special Agent
After the CCP seized power in 1949, Jiang Zemin became an engineer. Based on the lie that he was the orphaned son of martyr Jiang Shangqing, he was able to approach Jiang Shangqing’s subordinate, Wang Daohan, who helped start his climb to success in the CCP’s power hierarchy.
But there were always surprises. When Jiang Zemin and 12 others were sent to Moscow for training in 1955, he played music, sang songs, and told jokes to get attention. The Soviet intelligence service KGB was interested in him. It turned out that when the Soviet Red Army entered China in 1945 to defeat the Japanese, they found complete files of pro-Japanese special agents’ activities, including those related to “Nanjing University Young Leaders Training Session.” After discovering that Jiang Zemin was the son of notorious traitor Jiang Shijun and that he personally served as a special agent for the Japanese back then, KGB then assigned an undercover mistress, Klava, to seduce Jiang Zemin.
As expected, Jiang fell into the trap and, just as he indulged himself in the affair, KGB agents showed up. They promised Jiang to keep his traitorous history and the affair with Klava confidential “on one condition, that is: that Jiang join the Far East Bureau of the KGB and gather intelligence on Chinese students living in the Soviet Union as well as provide certain information regarding China,” according to The Real Story of China’s Jiang Zemin. “And so it was that Jiang did, indeed, continue to work for the KGB upon returning to China from Moscow.”
The official mouthpiece of China’s CCP government, The People’s Daily, reported briefly on December 11, 1999, that Jiang Zemin and then-Russian leader Boris Yeltsin signed in Beijing three Sino-Russian border agreements, which required China to cede the eastern section of the Sino-Soviet border, more than 1 million square kilometers (390,000 square miles) of the Chinese territory, to Russia.
While Jiang’s biography highlighted nearly all his achievements, his high-level meeting with Yeltsin and the three border agreements were not mentioned at all. To put things into perspective, the ceded land was over 30 times the size of Taiwan. Of China’s 9.6 million square kilometers of land, deserts and desertified areas constitute around 33% of all land, while seriously-eroded land accounts for roughly 38%. Only less than one-third of all land is thus habitable. But the expansive and rich land Jiang gave away was vast and fertile, bequeathed from past generations, bountiful in forests and rich in minerals and oil, which were important resources.
Because of this, many people referred to Jiang as China’s biggest traitor. But even Jiang’s successors did not dare to reveal these scandals, since doing so would seriously endanger the CCP’s “glorious” history and legitimacy.
Corruption and Seizing a Fortune
Jiang climbed to the top CCP position because he suppressed the student democratic movement in 1989. He was incompetent when it came to managing the country, but he was well-trained by his traitorous father to please others with talents such as playing music, singing, and more.
There were quite a few embarrassing moments on the international stage. When Jiang visited Spain in late June 1996, the King of Spain, Juan Carlos, invited him to review the guards of honor. To King Carlos’s surprise, at that very moment, Jiang took out a comb and proceeded to groom himself in the King’s presence. During the welcoming banquet in his honor that night, Jiang sat to the right of the Queen. Once again he combed his hair right in front of the camera. On June 25, 1996, the largest newspaper in Spain, El Pais, as well as many other papers, ran a front-page photo and story about the hair-combing incident.
There were also countless incidents when Jiang showed off his musicianship, singing, and dancing. One example occurred on March 30, 1999, when Jiang visited Mozart’s hometown of Salzburg accompanied by the President of Austria, Thomas Klestil. The most valuable item in Mozart’s former residence was a Viennese piano that was purchased by the maestro himself in 1785. After the president described the 200-year-old antique, Jiang dashed to the piano, plopped down on its stool, and opened the piano, eager to play. Instead of Mozart’s representative works, he played a Chinese song—“Wave Upon Wave in the Honghu Lake.” [1] President Klestil, visibly uncomfortable, clearly wished not to let Jiang touch the maestro’s precious antique but was bound by diplomatic etiquette to stand aside. Jiang obliviously played the piano while staring lewdly at a young Chinese woman next to him, hoping to win her admiration.
The affair between Jiang and singer Song Zuying was also well-known in China. After Song made her debut in the CCP mouthpiece CCTV’s 1991 Chinese New Year Gala, Jiang made a note of her. Song was then quickly promoted, and, after one performance, Jiang covertly handed her a little slip of paper that read, “Come see your big brother when you are in need. Big brother can help you resolve anything.” Later on, Song divorced her husband so that she and Jiang could meet more often conveniently, and Jiang also gave Song a Red Card to access Zhongnanhai (the CCP central government compound) at any time. Needless to say, those who dared to leak information or seek investigations on these matters were retaliated against.
Jiang’s promiscuity was accompanied by his corruption. Jiang had a slogan that went, “Amassing wealth while keeping a low profile.” After his son Jiang Mianheng returned from the United States in 1992, he built a gigantic telecommunications enterprise with support from Jiang Zemin, making Jiang Mianheng the No. 1 Corrupt Person in China. Not only that, with few accomplishments and not a single day's experience as a tenured professor, Jiang Mianheng was appointed vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1999.
The information shows that the Jiang family owns at least US $1 trillion in assets overseas and at least half of it has been laundered. Hong Kong news media once reported that the Bank for International Settlements discovered an unclaimed sum of over US $2 billion that had come out of China. Liu Jinbao, then vice-chairman of the Bank of China, later revealed the source of the funds after he was arrested. Liu said the money was Jiang Zemin’s, who was preparing a backup plan ahead of the CCP’s 16th National Congress by transferring funds overseas.
Jiang’s corruption quickly spread to lower-level officials. Reuters reported that Zhou Yongkang, former secretary of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission (PLAC) and minister of Public Security of China, had at least 90 billion yuan (or US $14.5 billion) in assets confiscated. Guo Boxiong and Xu Caihou, two vice chairmen of the Central Military Commission, were both found guilty of corruption and amassing fortunes by selling military positions.
As a result, the army became a hypermarket for power, money, and sex transactions. So far, more than 160 generals have been investigated, and so have over 400 vice-governor (or deputy minister) level officials. Among them, 121 officials each took at least over 100 million yuan in bribes. Lower-level officials were also found to be corrupt. Sheng Fenggang, a village Party secretary in Beijing, was found to have 31 kilograms in gold, cash of over 7.2 million yuan, more than 20 luxury cars, and closets of premium wines.
If divided among the people, the bribes taken by the officials could have solved China’s poverty problems.
But the above facts and numbers were not seen in Jiang’s obituary. Had the Chinese known the truth, they would probably have had a different type of “admiration” for Jiang’s “outstanding” leadership.
Money and Sex Trade in the Military
From the above, one can see the CCP is rotten to the core. After all, Jiang had few qualifications to be a head of state other than suppressing the democratic movement. To secure his potion as the Party secretary and chairman of the Central Military, he issued numerous titles to buy people’s loyalty, condoned smuggling and corruption, and allowed the sex trade to flourish.
Between 1993 and 2004 alone, Jiang promoted 79 military generals, and the number of major generals and lieutenant generals was in the hundreds. On January 23, 1996, Jiang told his subordinates, “Today is a nice day. How about we promote a few generals for fun?” Four officials became generals that day.
The military started doing business in the mid-1980s to subsidize military costs and “support the military with the military.” After Jiang took power in 1989, he allowed the military's wanton business practices and corruption to gain control. This led to unprecedented corruption in the military and army smuggling was worse than pirates.
At a national conference to look into smuggling in September 1998, then-premier Zhu Rongji released some numbers. In the first six months of that year alone, the army shot and killed 450 customs anti-smuggling officers, police, and other law enforcement officers, and over 2,200 were injured. Among the 800 billion yuan smuggled every year, at least 500 million came from the military. Assuming tax evasion was one-third of the merchandise’s cost, that means the military raked in 160 trillion yuan in that period of time. The money did not cover military expenses but went to officials’ own pockets.
The corruption quickly led to the sex trade. In 1995, the Third Branch of the General Staff alone had 15 such “entertainment” facilities that hired 476 young women who provided “full” service. In addition, the military had many clubs, guest houses, sanatoriums, and resorts, where high-ranking officials enjoyed such “pleasure” using public funds. This situation peaked in 1997.
These facilities were divided into super-class, high-class, and sub-class. There were eight super-class facilities in China nationwide that provided service 24 hours a day throughout the year. There were also more than 30 high-class facilities nationwide which were fully booked every day. The super-class facilities were exquisite and luxurious, with Z-9 military helicopters in place for emergency use. The waitresses, assistants, nurses, and other staff members were all unmarried young women. After passing political review and being selected from military and police art troupes, military and police health schools, and government agencies, they also received cultural, literature, etiquette, social, and other training before working at those facilities.
The obituary said Jiang strictly governed the army in accordance with the law, leading to great accomplishments. As mentioned above, it was essentially the opposite. There is a joke in China that only the weather forecast is factual while everything else on the CCP’s news is false.
Destroying Moral Values
As Jiang and his followers were ruining China with all this chaos, a new hope emerged on the horizon. Falun Gong, a meditation system based on the principles of Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, was introduced to the public by Mr. Li Hongzhi in 1992. Its profound principles and miraculous power in improving health and mind nature quickly drew tens of millions of practitioners.
Jiang deemed Falun Gong a threat and vowed to crush it, despite the opposition from all the other standing members of the Central Politburo. Claiming Falun Gong would jeopardize the Party, he and his followers instructed the police, intelligence service, and news media to fabricate stories to denigrate Falun Gong. With no evidence, in his speech at the Politburo meeting of the CCP’s Central Committee on June 7, 1999, he urged that efforts to quash Falun Gong be speeded up. “This is a political struggle between the Party and its enemies, both at home and abroad, over the [allegiance of the] masses and over the dominant position,” he said.
After he started the persecution in July 1999, Jiang vowed to eliminate Falun Gong in three months and issued the order to“defame their [practitioners’] reputation, bankrupt them financially, and destroy them physically!” In fact, at his order, an extrajudicial agency had already been established on June 10, 1999. It was known as the 610 Office. Functioning like the Gestapo, it penetrated all levels of government agencies with unparalleled power. The total cost of persecuting Falun Gong accounted for about one-quarter of China’s GDP. Between 2002 and 2012, the expense of “maintaining stability” also exceeded that of the national defense.
Falun Gong practitioners have no political agenda—they just want to be good people. Yet, Jiang and the CCP mobilized the state apparatus and resources to defame Falun Gong. The scale and the severity were beyond what went on during the Cultural Revolution and is unprecedented in history. All newspapers and television and radio stations produced and propagated lies to slander Falun Gong, such as misrepresenting the peaceful appeal on April 25, 1999; blaming Falun Gong for causing patient deaths; and staging the self-immolation incident on Tiananmen Square. In fact, according to an article published by Minghui on October 11, 2000, the 610 Office had already planned a self-immolation incident to frame Falun Gong. The self-immolation indeed took place on January 23, 2001, the eve of the Chinese New Year.
Because of their belief in Truthfulness-Compassion-Forbearance, untold numbers of Falun Gong practitioners have been arrested, detained, imprisoned, and tortured over the past 23 years. Some became victims of forced organ harvesting—a new form of evil on this planet. Information received by Minghui has confirmed that over 4,700 practitioners have lost their lives to the persecution, while the real death toll is likely much higher due to censorship and the information blockade. China Tribunal, an independent tribunal, issued a judgment in June 2019, stating that organ harvesting still continued in China and Falun Gong practitioners are the primary victims.
To sustain and intensify the persecution, Jiang and his followers linked officials’ performance and promotions to how well they carried out the persecution policy. Agents in the 610 Office, law enforcement, forced labor camps, and prisons were also given financial incentives to force practitioners to renounce their belief. All organizations in China, be they government agencies, business organizations, or schools, were ordered to organize their employees to watch slanderous videos and declare that they were against Falun Gong. The hate propaganda was also included in student textbooks, supplementary materials, and exam papers. In some places, passengers were forced to step on the image of Falun Gong’s founder before taking buses or trains.
It is ironic that the obituary praised Jiang as an excellent leader, when he had a track record of lies, betrayal, brutality, corruption, and moral degeneration. He plunged China into an abyss of social and moral issues, with a gloomy future for us, future generations, and the world. Many lessons can be learned and it requires us to understand the sins committed by Jiang and the CCP before getting back on track.
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Category: Perspective