I have been pondering this question in recent days amid the spate of rumors that the former president has gone to “meet Marx.”China has since dismissed the reports as “pure rumors.” Still, this may be an opportune time to look back at Jiang’s life as China’s paramount leader — a successor to the legendary strongmen, Chairman Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping wedding dresses .I have followed Jiang’s colorful career since I first met him in 1985, when I sat down with him for an exclusive interview for TIME Magazine. He had just been named mayor of Shanghai, China’s then-largest metropolis.He came across as an affable technocrat who took pride in occasionally speaking in English.

We conversed about old Hollywood movies, history and literature — things he remembered while growing up as a teenager in Shanghai.He even recited parts of Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address in English. When I complimented him on his wide range of interests and talents, he said he was only a “Jack wedding gowns of all trades, a master of none.”An engineer by training, Jiang said he was mainly preoccupied with solving the megacity’s housing and transport problems. “Our per capita housing space is about as big as a billiard table,” he said. “People are not satisfied.”His biggest challenge, he added, was to lead Shanghai’s renascence.In June 1989, Jiang moved to Beijing for an even bigger job. After student-led protests in Tiananmen Square led to a brutal suppression that month, Chinese leaders were reshuffled, including the removal of reformists like Chinese Communist Party (CCP) General Secretary Zhao Ziyang bridal gown . Paramount leader Deng Xiaoping would handpick Jiang as his successor.For many years, however, Jiang languished under the shadow of Deng, dismissed as a political lightweight who did not have his own vision or constituency.When Deng died in 1997, some China watchers darkly predicted Jiang’s imminent downfall.But Jiang proved his detractors wrongIn October 1997, I saw him again up close when I joined a group of TIME editors for an exclusive interview on the eve of his first state visit to the United States. This time, Jiang was worrying about loftier concerns — how to push China’s economic reform, how to improve Sino-U.S. relations, how to impress Americans and put Tiananmen cheap wedding dresses behind.During the interview, I pressed Jiang on the issue of corruption among children of senior officials. He deflected it cleverly. Noting that both his sons studied overseas, he said, “I take great satisfaction that both of them behave very well, and both have come back to work here in China.” As a doting grandfather, he said “one thing that I frequently warn myself is that I should not indulge them too much.”