Zhu Rongji, China's former premier who died on Wednesday aged 97, was one of the key figures behind the country's economic transformation in the 1990s and early 2000s. As premier from 1998 to 2003, he pushed sweeping reforms of state-owned enterprises, tightened fiscal policy, promoted private home ownership and helped secure China's entry into the World Trade Organization.
Zhu was reportedly descended from Zhu Yuanzhang, the founder and first emperor of the Ming dynasty. He was born in Changsha, Hunan, in 1928 and studied electrical engineering at Beijing's Tsinghua University. He joined the Communist Party in 1949, the year Mao Zedong proclaimed the founding of the People's Republic of China.
