Born in Yangzhou in 1926, Jiang was one of the last Chinese leaders to remember the 1949 Revolution. His father died fighting the Japanese while Jiang himself was attending National Central University in Japanese-occupied Nanjing before transferring to what is today Shanghai Jiao Tong University, in 1947. He did not play any role in the Revolution itself, but he did join the Communist Party while in college. Trained as an engineer, he was useful to the new regime. He was sent to the Soviet Union to get additional industrial training at the Stalin Automobile Works in Moscow and then worked for …