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| I took this photo in October 2013. From the very spot I’d stood with then Mayor Zhu Rongji, in 1988. Peace Hotel, 8th floor. |
I knew him well. Well… as well as I knew any senior leader of China. Apart perhaps, from another Mayor, the once Mayor of Dalian, member of the Politburo and near ascendant to the very top post in China, the now jailed Bo Xilai.
I recall standing with Zhu, when he was Mayor of Shanghai, in 1988, in the 8th Floor Chinese dining room of the Peace Hotel on the Bund, overlooking the opposite bank of the Yangtze, then a swampy, dilapidated mess known as Pudong.
“Pu” (浦 ) as in bank of a river and “Dong” ( 东 ) as in the east side. At the time, in 1988, still an abandoned and forgotten East Bank.
“We’re going to develop that into an international financial centre” he told me.
“Sure”, I thought. Dream on, buddy.
But, to be fair to my own judgement, I should also say that by this time, I’d seen what changes had been wrought in the previous abandoned rice paddies of Shenzhen. Now a major business and trade hub of the world, with nearly 20 million people, right next to us here in Hong Kong.
I knew not to underestimate what China can do when it sets its mind to it. And look at Pudong now. That’s it above. Zhu did that. For better or worse, one might say. I’d say better on balance, than the previous swamp. At the very least, startling.
I was there in Shanghai on behalf of Sir Peter Abeles and his Ansett Worldwide Aviation Services Company. We wanted to do a deal with Shanghai to lease some of Ansett’s planes to Shanghai Airlines.
Which we eventually did, with the help of Zhu.
The South China Morning Post’s article shows what a consequential figure he was.
Zhu Rongji was a very decent man. A good leader in tough times in the torrid politics of a secretive society.
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ADDED: Pedants will note, as do I, that the quote from Hamlet — “Alas, poor Yorik, I knew him well — is one of the most famous misquotes in literature. It’s I knew him. Not knew him well. Just that the misquote works better. (IMO).
This is Hamlet’s actual line:
Alas, poor Yorik! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rises at it.
“It” being Yorik’s skull. The line is a memento mori. We all must die. A reminder we are all mortal. We humans beings the only animals, the only living things on this earth who know this. Yorik, once vital and strong, once bearing Hamlet on his back, now a skull.
Zhu Rongji, once Major Changer of China, now “the late”.
Intimations of mortality.
