Former Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji Dies at 97

BEIJING: Former Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji has died, according to state media. The impatient, sharp-tongued reformer helped ignite China’s explosive economic boom by forcing wrenching change on state industry in the 1990s and leading the country into the World Trade Organization. The official Xinhua news agency reported that Zhu died of illness in Beijing at around 11 a.m. on Wednesday. He was 97 years old. Once sent into rural exile to do manual labor for praising reforms in other communist countries, Zhu pushed through a dizzying array of changes as premier, China’s top economic post, from 1998 to 2003. Zhu clashed with Communist Party conservatives and state industry bosses as he pushed state-owned companies to become efficient and profitable. That cost millions of layoffs, but helped propel China to overtake Japan as the second-largest economy behind the United States in 2010. Building on former leader Deng Xiaoping’s 1979 reforms, Zhu is credited with supplying the resourcefulness and tenacity to push through history-making changes such as China’s WTO membership, which helped to transform China into the world’s biggest exporter. Those changes helped to keep economic growth above 8% a year from 2000-2010, peaking at 14.2% in 2007. Named premier in 1998 at age 69, Zhu became a popular figure by criticizing official bungling and graft and accepting blame when the government fell short. His demanding style earned him the nicknames Boss and Zhu Fengzi, or Madman Zhu.