Some friendships between nations are built through treaties and official visits. Others acquire a deeper character through the personal experiences of the people, who build them. The life of Jiang Zemin offers a remarkable example. Long before he became President of the People’s Republic of China, Jiang developed a direct and lasting connection with Pakistan through his work at Taxila. That experience became one of the human links connecting China’s industrial development with Pakistan’s pursuit of economic self-reliance.
Born on August 17, 1926, in Yangzhou, Jiang Zemin belonged to a patriotic intellectual family and was educated as an electrical engineer. His professional career combined engineering, industrial management, economic affairs and public administration. Before rising to national leadership, he served as mayor of Shanghai and subsequently as secretary of the CPC Shanghai Municipal Committee. Chinese official historical accounts credit him with leading economic-development and urban-construction planning and promoting Shanghai’s transformation into an open, modern and technologically advanced city.
His Shanghai experience was particularly important because it placed him at the intersection of economic reform, industrial modernization and international engagement. He promoted the development of Pudong as an international and modern urban district, laying important groundwork for the transformation that would later make Pudong one of China’s most prominent economic centers.
But for Pakistan, Jiang’s earlier contribution in Taxila carries an especially personal significance.
In 1976, Jiang, then leading a high-level delegation from China’s First Ministry of Machine-Building Industry, spent almost a month in Pakistan working on the Foundry & Forge Works of the Heavy Mechanical Complex (HMC) in Taxila. Contemporary recollections from Pakistani engineers describe him as being closely involved in major technical and administrative decisions connected with commissioning the facility. The project was designed to strengthen Pakistan’s capacity to manufacture heavy castings and forgings—capabilities essential to a country’s industrial base.
The importance of this contribution should be viewed in its historical context. Pakistan in the 1970s was seeking to strengthen domestic industrial capacity and reduce dependence on imported machinery and equipment. Heavy engineering was therefore not simply another industrial sector; it was a foundation for broader economic development. The HMC subsequently became an important Pakistani engineering institution, producing capital machinery and equipment for sectors including power, cement, chemicals, petroleum, transport and other industries.
What makes Jiang’s Taxila experience particularly memorable is that his relationship with Pakistan was not confined to technical meetings. Pakistani accounts recall that he developed close relationships with engineers, technicians and workers at the complex. Two decades later, when he returned to Pakistan as China’s president in December 1996, he invited former Pakistani colleagues from the Taxila project to meet him at Aiwan-e-Sadr. That gesture demonstrated that, for Jiang, professional cooperation had developed into personal friendship.
This personal dimension matters because international relations are ultimately sustained by people. Projects may create infrastructure, but trust creates continuity. Jiang’s experience in Taxila gave him firsthand knowledge of Pakistan’s engineers, industrial workers and development aspirations. When he later assumed China’s highest leadership positions, Pakistan was therefore not an unfamiliar country viewed only through diplomatic reports. It was a country where he had worked, lived and built friendships.
Jiang’s contribution to China was equally significant. As China’s top leader during the 1990s and early 2000s, he presided over a period of rapid economic transformation, deeper international engagement and institutional development. China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001, while Hong Kong and Macao returned to Chinese sovereignty during his tenure. His leadership helped consolidate the reform and opening-up process and strengthened China’s international economic position.
For Pakistan, Jiang’s legacy therefore extends beyond the individual projects associated with his career. His generation of Chinese leadership helped establish an approach to cooperation in which infrastructure, industrial capacity, technology and human relationships reinforced one another. The continuing cooperation between HMC and Chinese enterprises illustrates how those industrial links have endured across generations.
Jiang Zemin passed away in Shanghai on November 30, 2022. His legacy deserves to be remembered not only through the history of China’s modernization but also through the personal connections he cultivated with Pakistan.
The Pakistan-China relationship is frequently described as an “iron-clad” or all-weather friendship. Such expressions acquire greater meaning when viewed through the stories of individuals like Jiang Zemin. His journey—from an engineer working in Taxila to the presidency of China—symbolizes a period when technical cooperation evolved into mutual confidence and when economic development became an important pillar of bilateral friendship.
The most enduring lesson of Jiang Zemin’s connection with Pakistan is simple: great international friendships are built not only in capitals, but also in factories, laboratories, construction sites and through relationships among ordinary professionals. His contribution at Taxila was part of that larger story.
As Pakistan and China look toward the future, the best way to honour Jiang Zemin’s legacy is not merely to remember the past, but to continue building on it—through industrial cooperation, technology transfer, education, investment and people-to-people exchanges. The friendship that began in places such as Taxila can continue to become a source of economic opportunity, technological progress and shared prosperity for generations to come.
