When the leader of the world's most populous country speaks, people listen--though it isn't always easy. Jiang Zemin, President of China, gives speeches loaded with fusty rhetoric, like "the primary stage of socialism" and "We will strive unswervingly to resolutely uphold Deng Xiaoping thought." His slicked-back hair, enormous spectacles and cryogenically fixed smile smack of the old-fashioned apparatchik. So wooden a leader is often in danger of being upstaged by his own podium.
Appearances can be misleading. When Senator Dianne Feinstein was mayor of San Francisco, she gave a dinner at her home for Jiang, then mayor of sister city Shanghai. The future President of China crooned When We Were Young, danced through the night, and later jokingly informed an American visitor that he had "left his heart" in that city by the Bay. When Richard Nixon visited Beijing in 1989, Jiang interrupted their meeting to leap to his feet and recite Lincoln's Gettysburg Address, in English and from memory. (Nixon felt compelled to get out of his chair and declaim along.) In the Philippines last year at a soiree on the presidential yacht, Jiang danced the cha-cha and sang a duet of Love Me Tender with President Fidel Ramos. When Jiang finally met President Clinton, Ramos advised, "Surprise him with the song."
It certainly would surprise Americans to learn that China's boss, who arrives for his summit with Clinton next week, has a human face. Jiang's visit is raising hopes of a reconciliation between the two geopolitical giants that will end eight years of official frostiness precipitated by China's 1989 bloody crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators in Tiananmen Square. Jiang certainly expects that. In his exclusive interview with Time, he declared, "At present, Sino-American relations have a favorable opportunity for further improvement."
That will depend in some measure on tangible progress on a range of issues from human rights to nuclear proliferation and trade. But much will hinge on Jiang himself and on what he says and does on a trip that will take him to Honolulu, Williamsburg, Va., Washington, Philadelphia, New York City, Boston and Los Angeles. While the American public regards him--if they regard him at all--as a cipher, until recently he was dismissed by some U.S. officials as a lightweight incapable of surviving the hardball intrigues at the top level of Chinese politics. But since the death of his mentor, Deng Xiaoping, in February, Jiang's reputation has been completely rewritten. He is now acknowledged as the man to deal with in China for the foreseeable future, a President firmly in control and committed to making a difference.
So it's time for Americans to get better acquainted with the ruler of the world's incipient other superpower. In fact, the two sides of Jiang go a long way toward explaining a remarkable career.
Jiang's main break, of course, was being chosen by Deng as his successor in 1989. It didn't hurt that Deng lived on for eight years as Jiang's protector or that he eventually grew too feeble to dump his protege--the fate of two previous heirs apparent. But there's also a sense in China that the relatively nonideological, technocratic Jiang may be the right leader for a China bursting with political, social and economic tensions, that what China needs now is an adroit, adaptable pol rather than a towering titan.