On August 12, 2026, at 11:06 a.m., Zhu Rongji, former Premier of the State Council of China, passed away in Beijing at the age of 98. The People's Daily obituary set the official tone: an outstanding member of the Communist Party of China, a loyal communist warrior proven by long testing, a distinguished proletarian revolutionary and statesman, an extraordinary leader of the Party and the state. Russia's Sputnik News and Lingshi Xiantan (领事闲谈, a Weibo commentary account) carried the news in succession. The full obituary runs to nearly two thousand words, and the section devoted to the 1990s economic reform is itself a condensed history of that era.
1 · From Shanghai to Beijing: Two Pivots of the Reform Commander
One detail in the obituary is easy to overlook: during his time running Shanghai from 1987 to 1991, Zhu Rongji proposed adjusting industrial structure, reorganizing the development advantages, and pursuing an export-oriented growth path, pushing the Pudong development-and-opening strategy into a substantive launch phase. The Shanghai years made a direct platform for his later economic work in the central government — in 1991 he was called to Beijing as Vice Premier of the State Council, in charge of machinery and electronics, energy, railways and transport, metallurgy and chemicals, and light industry and textiles; in June 1993 he concurrently took over as Governor of the People's Bank of China.
"Organized the clean-up of 'triangular debt,' working from the root and clearing the source"; "did a great deal of effective work to turn around an overheated economy, curb inflation, and achieve a 'soft landing'"; "worked hard to straighten out the fiscal and tax order... improve the financial regulatory system" — People's Daily obituary (2026-08-12)
2 · After 1998: Two Tests in One Term — The Asian Financial Crisis and WTO Accession
Zhu Rongji became Premier of the State Council in March 1998, facing a region-wide financial crisis and a once-in-a-century flood the moment he took office. The policy turn recorded in the obituary is sharp: from a moderately tight fiscal and monetary posture, shift to a proactive fiscal policy and a prudent monetary policy, expand domestic demand, and keep the economy growing steadily and rapidly. On the opening-up side, the line was to hold the line on the RMB (not devalue), implement a market-diversification and quality-first trade strategy, and firmly safeguard Hong Kong's status as an international financial center.
The obituary also singles out "presiding over the grueling negotiations for China's accession to the World Trade Organization" — one of the most emblematic events of Zhu Rongji's tenure. To place "not devaluing the RMB" and "the WTO negotiations" in the same paragraph is itself an official gloss on that policy combination: externally withstanding the financial shock, internally pushing market-oriented reform — the two lines converged within a single premiership.
3 · Institutional Legacy: Three Threads — Tax-Sharing, SOE Reform, and the Three Social Safety Lines
The obituary traces the institutional work Zhu Rongji presided over along a timeline: presiding over fiscal-and-tax reform, implementing a tax-system reform centered on fair tax burden and simplified tax structure, and introducing a tax-sharing fiscal system (分税制, fen shui zhi); making the reform of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) the central link of the economic-system reform and pushing the establishment of a modern enterprise system; setting up three basic social-safety lines — basic living security for laid-off SOE workers, unemployment insurance, and the urban residents' minimum living guarantee; and pushing the housing-system reform to a monetization of housing allocation.
The obituary keeps returning to a cluster of keywords: triangular debt, inflation, soft landing, tax-sharing reform, laid-off workers re-employment. They correspond to the most vexing problems of the 1990s Chinese economy — mutual payment defaults between enterprises, an overheated economy, the central government's too-low share of fiscal revenue, SOE over-staffing. The reforms of Zhu Rongji's tenure were aimed almost without exception at these specific problem points — not abstract institutional design.
4 · Why the Obituary Is Worth Reading as a Document
For anyone following China's economic reform, the value of this obituary is that it is the official account's most complete statement of Zhu Rongji's economic legacy, linking "triangular-debt clean-up → soft landing → tax-sharing reform → SOE reform → three social safety lines → WTO accession" into a single causal chain. It carries, of course, the official framing — but every reform it mentions is a real node of China's 1990s transition. As a historical document, it marks the coordinates of the "reform-assault years" more accurately than much secondary research.
"His noble spirit endures forever!" — Lingshi Xiantan (领事闲谈, 2026-08-12 18:54)
5 · An Architect of Practical China–Russia Cooperation — The Institutionalization of the Prime Ministers' Meeting Mechanism (increment appended 2026-08-12)
Beyond the obituary, Sputnik News contributes an angle that much of the Chinese-language coverage has underplayed: Zhu Rongji's relationship with the institutionalization of China–Russia practical cooperation. From 1999 to 2002, he participated in driving the 4th through 7th China–Russia Prime Ministers' regular meetings, pushing the mechanism further toward institutionalization; in 2000 the bilateral trade volume crossed US$8 billion for the first time; in 2001 the two sides reached an important agreement on the technical-economic feasibility study for a Russia-to-China oil pipeline, and continued to push cooperation in natural gas and nuclear energy.
Placing this strand alongside the economic main line in the obituary reveals a more complete Zhu Rongji: domestically, the operator of "triangular debt → soft landing → tax-sharing reform → WTO accession"; externally, the driver who turned China–Russia economic relations from political mutual trust into institutionalized cooperation. During his tenure, the Prime Ministers' regular meeting mechanism shifted from "meetings" into an "institution," and the institutional foundation of the two countries' economic cooperation was laid down — laying the groundwork for the two-plus decades of subsequent deepening of China–Russia practical cooperation.
The main body of the page uses the People's Daily obituary to organize the economic legacy; this section adds the Russian media's view of Zhu Rongji's external-economic legacy. In the same time window (1998–2002), the obituary sees the WTO negotiations, while the Russian media sees the institutionalization of the China–Russia Prime Ministers' regular meeting mechanism. The two lines point to one and the same thing: the Chinese economy under Zhu Rongji was shifting from inward reform to the simultaneous handling of two external tracks — integrating into the Western system (WTO) and managing great-power relations in the neighborhood (the China–Russia institutionalization).
6 · The "Economic Tsar" Who Dared to Slam the Table — Another Zhu Rongji in the Washington Post Obituary (increment appended 2026-08-13)
The People's Daily obituary is the official framing; the Russian media fill in the China–Russia institutionalization line; the Washington Post's long obituary takes a different tack, framing him as the "economic tsar" and focusing on temperament and cost. The Post writes that Zhu Rongji served as China's economic tsar for a decade — including the five years as Premier from 1998 to 2003 — and was known for his directness and biting humor, his impatience with banquets and protocol, and his zero tolerance for lazy and corrupt colleagues. In 1994, in Heilongjiang province in northeast China, he clashed with a provincial Party secretary and dismissed him on the spot; on another occasion, a local official reportedly showed off a lighter whose price far exceeded his salary in Zhu's presence, and Zhu fired him on the spot on corruption grounds.
"He was one of the most important economic architects of post-1949 China. He did more than anyone to integrate China into the global economy." — Nicholas Lardy, Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics
The Post writes the governance details of the 1990s with concrete texture. In 1993, when inflation reached 25 percent, Zhu Rongji was given full control over economic policy and quickly achieved a soft landing: banks lending to loss-making SOEs were placed under tighter supervision, government spending was sharply cut, and money-supply growth was reined in; temporary price controls on staple foods were used to break inflation expectations; inflation-indexed savings accounts both hedged against inflation and encouraged saving rather than consumption; and currency devaluation stimulated exports.
The costs are also written plainly. SOE reform ultimately cost more than 30 million workers their jobs; many of them later found work in the private sector; roughly 1.5 million officials lost their positions in the streamlining; he also pushed the military out of commercial operations and increased the flow of tax revenue to the central government. During the WTO negotiations, he was frequently accused at home of "selling out national interests" to the United States — but the terms he ultimately closed laid the foundation for the export-led growth of the years that followed.
The previous two sections come from the official obituary and the Russian media's perspective; this section is a third-party Western view of the same premiership. For the same tenure, the official account talks of achievements, the Russian media of institutionalization, the Post of temperament and cost. Reading the three obituaries side by side, between the "daring to slam the table" governance style and the "30 million laid-off workers" reform cost, there is the same person.
The Post also records his late years. Retiring at the age of 75 in 2003, he admitted that the work was not yet finished — he had not been able to close the widening gap between the prosperous eastern coastal cities and the poor rural hinterland. After retirement, he wrote several best-selling books, played the huqin (a Chinese two-stringed bowed instrument), and donated millions of dollars in book royalties to a foundation working to improve education in poor rural areas.