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Former Chinese president Jiang Zemin dies age 96

  Jiang Zemin, the Chinese communist leader who paved the way for the country’s emergence as a global superpower, has died.   According to a Wednesday, November 30 news release by state-run Xinhua news agency Zemin was aged 96.   Zemin died of leukemia and associated multiple organ failure on Wednesday in Shanghai. He is survived by his wife, two sons and two grandchildren. After being shunned by the West following the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre, China – with Jiang as its top leader – successfully reintegrated itself into the international community by regaining sovereignty over Hong Kong, winning the bid to host the 2008 Olympics in Beijing and, perhaps most importantly, joining the World Trade Organization. The former chief of the ruling Communist Party and state president  was handpicked in 1989 by then-paramount leader Deng Xiaoping to head the party after the bloody military suppression of the pro-democracy movement nationwide that same year led to the ouste...