When Qiao Shi, once China’s third most powerful man, died on June 14, he must have felt some solace. His passing came a mere three days after a major blow against his chief political antagonist, former Chinese regime leader Jiang Zemin.
Qiao passed away on June 14 at the age of 91, following failed hospital treatment, the state-run mouthpiece Xinhua reported. On the June 11, disgraced security chief Zhou Yongkang, was sentenced to life in prison, a key moment in the destruction of the political faction belonging to Jiang Zemin.Despite being one of the Chinese Communist Party’s most prominent leaders and head of the agency responsible for the regime’s police and internal security forces, Qiao Shi was something of a moderate, even liberal personality on the Chinese political scene prior to his retirement in 1998. A mark of his prestige in the Party was evident on June 17, when his death was marked with flags at half-staff.
Struggle With a Rising Despot
During the 1990s, Qiao Shi was the main political adversary of Jiang Zemin, whose time in office as Communist Party general secretary from 1989 to 2002 is increasingly becoming synonymous with entrenched corruption and appalling human rights violations.Qiao, from Shanghai, was born in 1924 as Jiang Zhitong. A Communist Party member since 1940, he specialized in intelligence and security. Like many Chinese officials, he was harshly persecuted during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), but rose to prominence in the 1980s, becoming a Politburo member and head of the Communist Party’s disciplinary agency in 1987.
