This week marked the death of Zhu Rongji, the former Chinese premier credited with engineering one of the greatest economic reforms in human history.
From overhauling a centrally planned economy and state-owned business sector to securing China’s membership in the World Trade Organization, his historic achievements helped shape the country’s rise and transformation into the modern state that is now a global cornerstone.
For us here in Hong Kong, Zhu played a key role in ensuring the smooth handover of the city from British to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, and led Beijing’s handling of the Asian financial crisis that year and the next.
His backing for maintaining Hong Kong’s US-dollar pegged exchange rate and refusal to depreciate the yuan under intense external pressure helped the city overcome that crisis.
Zhu will also be remembered in Hong Kong for his unwavering support and confidence in the city’s future under the “one country, two systems” governing principle, along with his wit, charm and often blunt but on-point talk.
“Even if you spend all your fiscal reserves three years from now, what is there to fear?” he once said to a dinner audience at Government House in a famously unscripted speech.
“If you issue 50-year long-term Hong Kong bonds on the mainland, I will be the first in line to buy them. I believe the mainland people will follow me and buy them, too!”
You can catch up on anything you may have missed in our comprehensive coverage of Zhu’s story at scmp.com. |
