Jiang Zemin (17 August 1926 – 30 November 2022) was a Chinese politician who served as the General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the fourth paramount leader of China from 1989 to 2002, also holding the presidency from 1993 to 2003. Rising from an electrical engineering background, he unexpectedly came to power as a compromise candidate after the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, replacing Zhao Ziyang, and later consolidated his authority as the "core leader" of the third generation. Domestically, he introduced the "socialist market economy" in 1992, privatized state-owned enterprises, launched education initiatives like Project 211 and 985, and initiated a crackdown on Falun Gong in 1999. His era saw landmark events such as the return of Hong Kong (1997) and Macau (1999), China's entry into the WTO (2001), and the founding of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, though relations with the US were strained by the 1996 Taiwan Strait crisis and the 1999 embassy bombing. His ideological contribution, the "Three Represents", was enshrined in the CCP constitution in 2002, and he gradually handed power to Hu Jintao before dying in Shanghai at age 96.