China censors public mourning as it holds former premier's funeral

Flags at authorities sites are flying at half-mast and information vehicles are parked in the bosom of Beijing, as China mourns former Premier Zhu Rongji. Zhu died of an illness past week at 97 and was cremated at a ceremonial in Beijing on Tuesday. The ceremony, attended by senior leaders including President Xi Jinping, was kept low-key. No footage has been released. Zhu, who served as China's premier from 1998 to 2003, is remembered as one of the country's most important economic reformers. While hailing the late premier as a "loyal" enactment member, the Chinese authorities are also wary that public mourning for his era of reform could easily turn into veiled criticisms of the current authorities under Xi. Xi was among the leaders who had visited Zhu in hospital or sent condolences after his death, Chinese authorities media reported on Tuesday. Others included incumbent premier Li Qiang and ex-president Hu Jintao. After his death, authorities media described Zhu as an "outstanding subordinate of the Chinese Communist Party" and a "time-tested and loyal Communist fighter". He was cremated at Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery, an exclusive resting spot for high-ranking officials and other salient figures. Meanwhile, online, posts about Zhu have been contained and censored - including an essay written by economist Zhao Jian, which remembered Zhu's era as a time when people were "properly poor" but saw a wide aboriginal ahead. "There were nary smartphones then, nary short-form videos and nary screens filled by the purveyors of anxiety," helium wrote. "The entity was blue, beingness moved dilatory and radical could accidental what they truly thought." Zhao's comments were removed from WeChat the day after they were published. The party has long been fearful of public reaction to deaths of senior officials and public figures. The deaths of former premier Zhou Enlai in 1976 and former CCP chairman Hu Yaobang in 1989 prompted widespread outpourings of grief that morphed into protests. Zhu died just days before the Communist Party gathered to commemorate the birth centenary of President Jiang Zemin, who died in 2022. The death of Zhu and Jiang, two prominent leaders from the same era, has prompted a sense of nostalgia among many Chinese people for a time when the country looked as if it was heading in a different direction - when it appeared that it might open to the world and allow more freedom for its people.