China's state broadcaster began airing a 12-episode documentary on Jiang Zemin on August 12, 2026, launching a week of carefully choreographed commemoration ahead of what will be the grandest tribute a Chinese leader has received in a generation — and one that poses an awkward question for the man who ordered it.
A Ceremony That Places Jiang Among the Immortals
The scale of the commemoration is the first signal worth reading. Since the People's Republic was founded, only six figures have been honored with a formal memorial meeting (紀念大會) on the centenary of their birth: Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Liu Shaoqi, Zhu De, Deng Xiaoping, and Chen Yun. On August 17, 2026, Jiang Zemin becomes the seventh.
The meeting will be held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, convened jointly by all five of China's top governing bodies — the CPC Central Committee, the National People's Congress Standing Committee, the State Council, the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, and the Central Military Commission. Xi Jinping is expected to deliver the keynote address. Thousands of attendees from across the capital's political and civic institutions will fill the hall.
The six days of programming on CCTV-1 leading up to the meeting are not filler. Two episodes per night, timed to conclude on August 16 — the day before Xi speaks — the documentary reconstructs Jiang's political biography from his Shanghai years through the "Three Represents" theory and the concept of keeping pace with the times. The sequencing is deliberate: the documentary builds the narrative; the meeting seals it.
Why Xi Needs This Commemoration
The honors being bestowed on Jiang tell you something important about Xi's political position in 2026, not just about Jiang's place in history.
Elevating Jiang to the level of Mao and Deng serves Xi's long-term legitimacy project. The CPC's authority rests on a story of unbroken, successful leadership — each generation handing the baton to the next, each era contributing a necessary chapter in China's ascent. The 2021 historical resolution passed at the sixth plenary session of the 19th Central Committee already embedded this logic, placing Jiang's era — and the "Three Represents" theory — within the continuous arc of party development. The centenary commemoration is the ritual confirmation of that positioning: Jiang is not a predecessor to be managed but a founding pillar of the orthodox succession.
When Jiang died in November 2022, Xi described him as having "immortal achievements" (不朽功勳) at the state funeral, which was conducted at Deng Xiaoping-level protocol. In July 2026, at ceremonies marking the 105th anniversary of the CPC's founding, Jiang was for the first time mentioned alongside "old-generation revolutionaries" in the same breath of "deep remembrance." The centenary meeting completes the elevation.
There is also a more immediate political function. Jiang commanded a substantial network within the party — figures associated with his era and with the subsequent Hu Jintao period still carry symbolic weight. A grand commemoration, presided over by Xi himself, is also an act of integration: bringing those networks formally under the party's consolidated historical narrative, rather than leaving them as a separate legacy requiring management.
The Three Represents Problem
Here is the tension at the heart of the week's events. Jiang Zemin's era was defined by forces that Xi has spent much of his tenure reversing or containing.
Under Jiang, China entered the World Trade Organization in 2001, opening its economy to foreign investment on an unprecedented scale. The private sector expanded rapidly. China's manufacturing base became deeply intertwined with Western supply chains. The "Three Represents" theory — Jiang's signature ideological contribution, enshrined in the party constitution — explicitly repositioned the CPC as representing "advanced productive forces," which in practice meant welcoming entrepreneurs and private capital into the party's core constituency.
Today's Beijing speaks a different language: national security, technological self-reliance, supply chain independence, and the party's comprehensive leadership over every sector of economic life. The conditions Jiang navigated — a world willing to integrate China into its institutions, a party content to let the private economy lead — no longer exist and are unlikely to return.
If the August 17 address emphasizes the "Three Represents," the obvious question is what that emphasis means in 2026. Analysts will be watching whether it is deployed as pure historical citation — a way of honoring Jiang without endorsing his era's policy assumptions — or whether it carries any signal about economic direction at a time when private sector confidence in China remains fragile.
Taiwan Is the Wildcard in This Commemoration
For observers in Taipei, the most consequential variable in the week's events is how Beijing chooses to handle Jiang's cross-strait legacy — specifically, whether it revives what became known as the "Jiang Eight Points."
On January 30, 1995, Jiang proposed an eight-point framework for cross-strait relations that simultaneously reasserted the "One China" principle and offered to negotiate a formal end to the state of hostility between the two sides. It called for economic cooperation, cultural exchange, and expanded people-to-people contact. It was, in its framing at least, an offer of engagement alongside a political bottom line.
The offer did not survive the year intact. After then-Taiwan President Lee Teng-hui's speech at Cornell University in June 1995, Beijing launched a series of military exercises that culminated in the 1996 Taiwan Strait missile crisis, timed around Taiwan's first direct presidential election. The sequence illustrated what defined Jiang's Taiwan approach: a willingness to pursue engagement and coercion in parallel, switching between them rapidly when Beijing judged its red lines had been crossed. His administration also pioneered what became a durable template in Beijing's Taiwan strategy — distinguishing between the governing authorities and the Taiwanese public, targeting civil society, business communities, and civic organizations separately from the political leadership.
If the August 17 address revisits the "Jiang Eight Points," the question is whether it is being deployed as historical record or as a living precedent. A commemoration that frames Jiang's Taiwan approach purely as a contribution to "national reunification" tells one story. A commemoration that draws explicitly on the lessons and experience of his cross-strait work — including its setbacks — tells a different and more operationally significant one.
What August 17 Will Actually Reveal
Three things are worth watching when Xi takes the podium.
The first is the language used to describe the Jiang era. Whether the address emphasizes "Three Represents," the WTO accession and economic opening, Hong Kong and Macao's return, or positions Jiang within the "stood up, got rich, got strong" historical arc will indicate which version of Jiang's legacy Beijing wants active in public memory right now.
The second is who else appears on the stage and in what capacity. Jiang's political network extends across the Hu Jintao generation and into the current standing committee's broader orbit. The guest list is a map of managed legacies.
The third is the Taiwan passage, if there is one. Its presence, absence, or framing will be the subtlest and most consequential signal of the week.
The documentary runs through August 16. The speech comes August 17. In Beijing's political calendar, that sequencing is never accidental. （Related： Beijing Watch | Israel Closes Chengdu Post as China Ties Quietly Fray ｜ Latest ）
