News Snapshot:
But Chinese people found plenty of reasons to think more fondly of Jiang’s time in high central office from 1989 to 2004, when China shifted from a post-Tiananmen political freeze to years of giddy, sometimes reckless and polluting growth. The party tightly controlled political life, but it allowed rights lawyers, commercial news outlets, combative dissidents and liberal-minded party scholars to participate in public debate – a modicum of freedom that does not exist now. “Toad, we blamed you wrongly before; you’re the ceiling, not the floor,” said one comment, citing a popular nickname for Jiang, drawing on his squat figure...
