Zhu Rongji, who drove China's 1990s economic reforms, has died at 97

Then-Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji arrives at Hong Kong's international airport on Nov. 18, 2002, for the opening of the World Congress of Accountants. K.Y. Cheng/South China Morning Post via Getty Images hide caption

Then-Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji arrives at Hong Kong's international airport on Nov. 18, 2002, for the opening of the World Congress of Accountants.

Zhu Rongji, former premier of China, has died at age 97. The cause of death was given as illness, according to state media.

Zhu, an acerbic technocrat and a trained engineer, was renowned for far-reaching economic reforms throughout the 1990s that sought to transition China from the chaos of its post-Maoist years to a more global market-oriented financial system, without completely ceding the Communist Party's control over the economy.

Despite staying almost completely out of the public eye after retiring from the premiership in 2003, he remains both loved and reviled in the country indelibly shaped by him. His reform legacy remains contested in China; in freeing up the country's enormous labor and financial resources, he helped to create vast amounts of wealth over the next three decades while also seeding institutions with future vulnerabilities.

"From the point of view of a policymaker, [he] embraced the notion of a China whose economic system was more compatible with that of the West. And by compatible, I mean vastly reformed, more open, less state-dominated, very limited state intervention," said Charlene Barshefsky , a lawyer and former U.S. trade representative who sat across the negotiating table from Zhu over years-long talks to let China enter the World Trade Organization (WTO).

In order to join the WTO, China first needed to get preferential trading status with the United States — which in turn demanded hard concessions and that it open up its closed economy to American companies. Zhu was under huge pressure to find compromise, and he let his views be known.

Zhu Rongji (left) answers reporters' questions during a joint news conference with then-President Bill Clinton on April 8, 1999, in Washington, D.C. Joyce Naltchayan/AFP via Getty Images hide caption