Zhu Rongji (1928– )

Chinese communist politician, vice premier from 1991 and prime minister 1998–2003. He rose to prominence 1988–91 when, as mayor of Shanghai, he promoted market-centred economic reforms and negotiated a peaceful resolution to the pro-democracy demonstrations in the city in 1989. He became a vice premier in 1991, with a particular interest in economic affairs, and entered the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Politburo in 1992.

The 1997 party congress designated Zhu the third-ranking figure in the CCP, behind President Jiang Zemin and Li Peng whom he replaced as prime minister in March 1998. He immediately announced a radical downsizing of the government to meet the needs of a market economy. Fifteen of the 40 ministries were to be abolished or merged, and half of the 8 million bureaucrats to be made redundant.

Born in Changsha city, in Hunan, the province of Mao Zedong, the university-educated Zhu joined the CCP in 1949. He worked in the State Planning Commission, but in 1957 and 1962, during campaigns by Maoist ultra-leftists, was denounced as a ‘rightist capitalist roader’ and exiled briefly to the countryside, where he worked as a farm labourer and pig feeder. He was fully rehabilitated from the late 1970s, with Deng Xiaoping in power, and during the 1980s worked as a minister in the state economic commission. Between 1993 and 1995 he served as governor of China's Central Bank and gained the reputation of being a tough and innovative technocrat. Dubbed by the media ‘China's Gorbachev’, Zhu is a strong opponent of bureaucratic corruption, stating once that he wished that he had 100 bullets ‘99 for corrupt officials and one for myself’.