In a 40-minute speech on Monday, Xi called on the Communist Party to carry forward Jiang’s legacy, presenting the current leadership as the continuation of his political and ideological project. That message was also carried in state media coverage in recent days.Under Jiang and Zhu, China pushed through painful changes: shuttering chronically unprofitable state firms, dismantling the old housing system in favour of a commercial property market, weathering the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s, and joining the World Trade Organization in 2001.Xi now faces considerable challenges of his own as he seeks to weather trade frictions with the…