Jiang Zemin: China says goodbye to former leader

People watched Jiang's memorial service on TV in Taizhou, Jiangsu province

China has bid its farewell to former leader Jiang Zemin in a state memorial service in Beijing.

Jiang, who took power after the 1989 crackdown of the Tiananmen Square protests, will be remembered for leading the country through a decade of burgeoning economic growth and prosperity.

He oversaw notable events like China's entry into the World Trade Organization, and the handover of Hong Kong from the British to the Chinese.

The Chinese Communist Party said he died last Wednesday from leukaemia and multiple organ failures. He was 96.

President Xi Jinping delivered the eulogy in a near hour-long ceremony in the Great Hall of the People, where he hailed "Comrade Jiang's" decisive leadership.

"He had the extraordinary courage to make bold decisions and the great courage to carry out theoretical innovation at critical moments," he told a packed hall of dignitaries in black suits.

• Cloaking Xi Jinping dissent in Jiang nostalgia

• Chinese bypass censors to remember ‘Grandpa Jiang’

• Obituary: Jiang Zemin

Mourners observed three minutes of silence outside Jiang's former home in Yangzhou, in Jiangsu province

Some people on Shanghai's streets also observed the silence. However observers said that life largely went on as normal

Covid testing workers held a silence in Bazhou in China's western Xinjiang region

In Hong Kong, students observed a silence at school assemblies

Jiang died in Shanghai. A plane carrying his glass coffin arrived in Beijing last Thursday for the formalities

Chinese President Xi Jinping and other party leaders paid their final respects to Jiang in a smaller ceremony at a Beijing hospital on Monday. He was cremated later that day.

.