[b] Urged by Deng Xiaoping's southern tour in 1992, Jiang officially introduced the term socialist market economy in his speech during the 14th CCP National Congress held later that year, which accelerated opening up and reform.

Jiang gradually vacated his official leadership titles from 2002 to 2005, being succeeded in these roles by Hu Jintao, although he and his political faction continued to influence affairs until much later.

[9] As Jiang became increasingly involved in the Communist Party, his main work shifted from the technical side of engineering to administrative and political tasks.

When the Cultural Revolution began in the same year, he did not suffer greatly during the turmoil, but was pulled down from his position as director of the institute and was sent to a May Seventh Cadre School.

In 1970, after leaving the cadre school, he became the deputy director of the Foreign Affairs Bureau of the ministry and was sent to the Socialist Republic of Romania, where he served as head of the expert team to establish fifteen machinery manufacturing plants in the country.

[10][11][12] In 1979, following a thawing of diplomatic relations between China and the United States, Deng Xiaoping decided to encourage special economic zones (SEZs) as part of his Four Modernizations.

After pressure from premier Gu and Shanghai mayor Wang Daohan, "ardent reformist" Zhao Ziyang appointed Jiang as the first vice minister and party secretary of the newly established Ministry of Electronics Industry.

[20][21][22] At the 13th National Congress of the CCP held in October 1987, Jiang was promoted from mayor to Shanghai party secretary, the most powerful position in the city, reporting directly to the central government.

[23] In April 1989, former general secretary Hu Yaobang died; he had previously been forced to resign in January 1987 and accused of supporting "bourgeois liberalization".

[20] His death catalyzed the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre,[24] leading to an ideological crisis between "liberals" (who supported aggressive reforms) and "conservatives" (who favored slower change).

[25] After the Shanghai-based World Economic Herald tried to publish a eulogy rehabilitating Hu and praising his reformist stance, Jiang took control of the newspaper's editorial board.

[56] After the coastal regions and SEZs were sufficiently developed, Jiang worked to reduce geographic disparities by encouraging richer cities to "provide financial, technological, and managerial assistance to the poorer, western ones.

Foreign policy under Jiang inherited from that of Deng Xiaoping, that is, taoguang yanghui, or "hide one's talent and bide one's time", which emphasized the use of cooperative rhetoric and the avoidance of controversy.

[64] In July 1993, the United States Navy stopped a Chinese container ship, the Yinhe, based on the incorrect suspicion that it was carrying chemical weapon precursors bound for Iran.

[65] Although China denied the allegation, the United States cut off the Yinhe's GPS, causing it to lose direction and anchor on the high seas for twenty-four days until it acceded to an inspection.

In the official summit meeting with president Bill Clinton, the tone was relaxed as they sought common ground while largely ignoring areas of disagreement.

[67] After the United States bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999, Jiang seemed to have put up a harsh stance for show at home, but in reality only performed symbolic gestures of protest, and no solid action.

[56] Jiang deemed the United States-China bilateral relation too important to be harmed in the emotion of the moment and sought to soothe the Chinese public's outrage.

[69] On April 1, 2001, a United States US EP-3 surveillance aircraft collided mid-air with a Chinese Shenyang J-8 jet fighter over the South China Sea.

The People's Daily and CCTV's 7 pm Xinwen Lianbo each had Jiang-related events as the front-page or top stories, a fact that remained until Hu Jintao's media administrative changes in 2006.

[77] The persecution that followed was characterized as a nationwide campaign of propaganda, as well as the large-scale arbitrary imprisonment and coercive reeducation of Falun Gong organizers, sometimes resulting in death due to mistreatment in detention.

[81] To maintain China's image as a stable and respected country, Jiang and Hu emphasized their unity, striving to make this transition the first "smooth and harmonious" one in the PRC's history.

[82][83] Jiang stepped down as general secretary and left the Politburo Standing Committee, but retained the chairmanship of the Central Military Commission,[84] which controlled the army and the nation's foreign policy.

In China's strictly defined protocol sequence, Jiang's name always appeared immediately after Hu Jintao's and in front of the remaining sitting members of the CCP Politburo Standing Committee.

[106][107][108] He also attended the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China mass parade in October 2019, marking his last public appearance prior to his death.

[125][126] On the day of Jiang's death, the government released a notice that the national flags would be flown half-staff in key locations of Beijing and diplomatic missions abroad.

[128]: 129 The policies of his successors, Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, have widely been seen as efforts to address perceived imbalances and move away from a sole focus on economic growth toward a broader view of development which incorporates non-economic factors such as health and the environment.

Following the Tiananmen protests, Jiang threw his support behind elder Chen Yun's conservative economic policies, but subsequently changed his allegiance to Deng Xiaoping's reform-oriented agenda following the latter's "Southern Tour".

[132] While continued economic reforms resulted in an explosion of wealth around the country, it also led to the formation of special interest groups in many sectors of the economy, and the exercise of state power without any meaningful oversight.

[131] Historian and former Xinhua journalist Yang Jisheng wrote that Jiang might well have been given a positive historical assessment had it not been for his decision to 'overstay his welcome' by remaining in the Central Military Commission post after Hu had formally assumed the party leadership.