Zhu ziqing biography of abraham

CHAPTER ONE

Tiger on the Brink
Jiang Zemin and China's New Elite

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By BRUCE GILLEY
University of California Press

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PART I

"Son" of a Martyr, 1926-1970

Leaving Yangzhou

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    The streets were dark and silent except for the occasional squawk from a Liberation-brand truck roaring through Beijing's suburbs bound for the provinces. It was less than two weeks since the lunar new year celebrations of early February 1997. The cold, somber atmosphere of the capital had yet to be enlivened by the rush of migrant workers seeking jobs in the city after the holiday. Inside a second-floor room at a hospital in the western suburbs, Jiang Zemin, China's highest leader, had convened an emergency meeting of the country's most powerful ruling body, the Politburo standing committee. One floor above the gathering lay the withered corpse of a man whose very presence had seemed to hold this vast country of 1.2 billion people together for the preceding two decades. Deng Xiaoping, a little man from distant Sichuan province and grand designer of the country's successful economic reform program of the 1980s, was dead.

    Sitting on the fringes of the grim conclave, Deng's widow, Z

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