Xi Jinping commemorated Jiang Zemin, the most embarrassing thing is not to forget the old, but the Chinese suddenly had a comparable era.

Xi Jinping spent about 40 minutes assessing Jiang Zemin today.

This speech served a very clear political purpose: to tell the whole party that Jiang Zemin belongs to the legitimate political tradition of the Communist Party of China, and that the “new era” led by Xi Jinping today is the continuation of this historical line.

Before the centenary of Jiang Zemin's birth, the Communist Party of China released 12 documentaries, and China's networks also re-appeared in the antiquity of Jiang Zemin's era. Jiang himself, of course, was not a democratic political figure. He came to power in the political pattern after the repression of the sixth and fourth century, and the Communist Party of China did not give up one party rule, and the repression of dissenters, religious groups and Falun Gong also left a serious record of human rights.

But evaluating Jiang Zemin and comparing Jiang Zemin period are two things.

In the 1990s to the beginning of this century, Chinese society experienced a different political and economic combination: the Chinese Communist Party continued to monopolize political power while expanding the market economy, attracting foreign capital, promoting private enterprises, joining the World Trade Organization, and allowing society to gain greater space in some non-political fields.

The party re-entered enterprises and social institutions, “national security” continued to expand its scope, Internet control was strengthened, political constraints on private capital were deepened in the fields of religion and education, and political constraints on private capital increased. In 2018, the limitations on the term of office of the president of the country were abolished, and the formal constraints that still existed in the system of supreme power transfer after reform and opening up were further removed.

Therefore, when the official television station continued to broadcast Jiang Zemin documentary, the audience saw not only a deceased general secretary of the Communist Party of China, but also the streets, enterprises, diplomatic scenes, media environment and social atmosphere of that era.

This explains why "missing Jiang Zemin" has a complex political meaning today. It does not necessarily mean that the public recognizes the political repression of the Jiang era, nor does it necessarily mean that the Chinese really want to restore Jiang Zemin himself.

He cannot deny Jiang Zemin, because denying Jiang will undermine the leadership legacy of the Communist Party of China itself; he cannot really restore the political and economic environment of the Jiang era, because Xi's logic of ruling over the past decade is based precisely on strengthening party power, strengthening the security system and concentrating the highest power.

Thus, a commemorative congress aimed at demonstrating the “continuity of history” demonstrates the breakdown of history.

Jiang Zemin should not be romanticised.The responsibility for repression he left also requires a historical settlement.But for Xi, the more difficult question to answer is not how good Jiang Zemin is, but why a former leader who belongs to the CCP authoritarian system is relatively open today because of the contrast of the times.

When a regime needs to rely on the memory of the past to prove it right today, and the public finds it backward through the past, the propaganda machine is facing no longer a problem of memory, but of reality.