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TIGER ON THE BRINK: Jiang Zemin and China's New Elite. By Bruce Gilley. Berkeley (California) and London: University of California Press. 1998. xi, 395 pp. (Photos.) US,$29.95, cloth. ISBN-0-520-21395-5.
IN this first biography to appear in English of China's third generation leader, by Hong Kong journalist Bruce Gilley,Jiang Zemin, born in Yangzhou on 17 August,1926, a "year of the tiger" in China's lunar calendar, is depicted "on the brink" of full leadership upon the death of mentor Deng Xiaoping in February 1997. Jiang emerges as quite a different character from either the earthy, charismatic Mao Zedong or the short, blunt Deng Xiaoping, typically impressing Western visitors as bland, slick and indecisive. Yet Gilley shows him to be both intelligent and politically adroit, a character, in fact, who abounds in paradox.
Though not yet the beneficiary of a personality cult approaching Mao's (Deng disowned any such pretensions), Jiang has shown skill in creating publicity for himself, not only via such staples as encouraging hagiographic publications, but through the unprecedented exploitation of the popular media, often performing spontaneously in public on the piano, the twostring erhu, even offering to accompany Clinton's saxophone on the flute. Yet he also appears disarmingly modest at times, admitting for example at the time of his selection as chair of the pivotal Central Military Commission (CMC) in 1989 that he was quite lacking any military experience (as everyone knew). Jiang's public image is benign to the point of buffoonery, giving rise to such nicknames as "panda bear," "teapot," and "tiger balm" (which Jiang good-naturedly tolerates), but this should by no means lead one to underestimate him politically, as indicated by his smooth elimination of such formidable rivals as...