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Jiang Zemin: China says goodbye to former leader

Getty Images TaizhouGetty Images
People watched Jiang's memorial service on TV in Taizhou, Jiangsu province

China has bid its farewell to former leader Jiang Zemin in a state memorial service in Beijing.

Jiang, who took power after the 1989 crackdown of the Tiananmen Square protests, will be remembered for leading the country through a decade of burgeoning economic growth and prosperity.

He oversaw notable events like China's entry into the World Trade Organization, and the handover of Hong Kong from the British to the Chinese.

The Chinese Communist Party said he died last Wednesday from leukaemia and multiple organ failures. He was 96.

President Xi Jinping delivered the eulogy in a near hour-long ceremony in the Great Hall of the People, where he hailed "Comrade Jiang's" decisive leadership.

"He had the extraordinary courage to make bold decisions and the great courage to carry out theoretical innovation at critical moments," he told a packed hall of dignitaries in black suits.

Getty Images Mourners obvservce 3 minutes of respect outside Jiang's former home in YangzhouGetty Images
Mourners observed three minutes of silence outside Jiang's former home in Yangzhou, in Jiangsu province
Reuters Pedestrians and police guards stand to attention for a three-minute silence in ShanghaiReuters
Some people on Shanghai's streets also observed the silence. However observers said that life largely went on as normal
Getty Images covid workers observe the silenceGetty Images
Covid testing workers held a silence in Bazhou in China's western Xinjiang region
EPA Students at a Hong Kong school at an assembly memorialising Jiang ZeminEPA
In Hong Kong, students observed a silence at school assemblies
XINHUA Chinese soldiers frogmarch as they carry Jiang Zemin's glass coffin off a place arriving from ShanghaiXINHUA
Jiang died in Shanghai. A plane carrying his glass coffin arrived in Beijing last Thursday for the formalities
XINHUA Chinese leaders pay their final respects to Jiang Zemin at the Chinese PLA General Hospital in Beijing, China on Monday 5/12XINHUA
Chinese President Xi Jinping and other party leaders paid their final respects to Jiang in a smaller ceremony at a Beijing hospital on Monday. He was cremated later that day.

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