Jiang Zemin was a President of the People's Republic of China (PRC) from 1993 to 2003 who oversaw a period of rapid economic growth and expanding global influence. Jiang developed a close relationship with U.S. president William J. Clinton. Jiang Zemin was born in Yangzhou and trained as a mechanical engineer, although he entered government service and rose to become minister of electronic industries in 1983. He later became mayor of Shanghai. Following the 1989 Tiananmen Square Protests, Jiang emerged as a compromise candidate to be general secretary of the Communist Party who was seen as neither too liberal nor too reactionary. Jiang initially adopted a policy of cautious political and economic reforms. In 1992, he accelerated the pace of economic restructuring and embraced a model that combined free-market principles and continued government control of some sectors of the economy. Under Jiang, the PRC's economy grew by an average of 8 percent per year.

Jiang endeavored to improve relations with the United States and other Western powers after the Tiananmen Square incident. Clinton decoupled American trade policy toward the PRC from that country's human rights record. In 1996, relations between Washington and Beijing were again strained by the Taiwan Strait Crisis; Jiang was also criticized in the United States for his unwillingness to allow democratization in Tibet. Nevertheless, in 1997 Jiang helped improve Sino-American relations when he became the first PRC leader to visit the United States since 1985. The presidents of the two countries agreed to implement the 1985 accord on the Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy. Clinton reciprocated with a state visit to the PRC the following year. The PRC president also prevented an escalation in tensions between Washington and Beijing over the U.S. bombing of the Chinese embassy during the 1999 Kosovo War. One of his greatest foreign policy successes was PRC entry into the World Trade Organization in 2001. Jiang offered diplomatic support to the United States in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks, but opposed U.S. military action in the 2003 Iraq War. In 2003, he was succeeded by Hu Jintao as president, although Jiang retained other party posts until 2005.

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