In a Chinese Leaders Death, Mourning for a More Hopeful Time

In 1998, Zhu Rongji, then China’s premier, told the staff of an investigative news program that he was a devoted viewer.He went so far as to say that the broadcast had given him ideas for reforms.He then challenged the Communist Party’s doctrine that the media should emphasize what it called positive reporting.

“Did ‘mainly positive reporting’ mean that 99 percent of reports had to be positive?” he asked rhetorically.“Wouldn’t 51 percent be enough?”“Without such programs, how can the people’s voices be heard?” he asked.Mr.

Zhu was not calling for an independent press, which the party did not permit.The investigative show, after all, was aired by the state broadcaster.

But he made clear that he regarded critical reporting not as a threat to the government, but as essential to effective government.After Mr.Zhu’s death on Wednesday at 97, Chinese people circulated that story alongside many others portraying him as a straight talker, an independent thinker and, in the words of one commentator, “the finest premier in China’s march toward modernity.”Mr.

Zhu, who served as premier from 1998 to 2003 under former President Jiang Zemin, was the forceful technocrat behind some of China’s most consequential economic changes.He pushed the country deeper into the market economy and the global trading system, laying the foundations for two decades of extraordinary growth.

Those changes also caused mass layoffs, strengthened the central government and left enduring social and economic problems....