The body of the late former Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji was cremated on the 18th at Beijing’s Babaoshan. Authorities closed off roads around Babaoshan, and Shijingshan Road was crowded with uniformed and plainclothes police as well as security personnel. Some Beijing residents lamented that they had no way to pay their last respects.
Zhu Rongji passed away in Beijing at 11:06 a.m. on the 12th, at the age of 98.
A reporter from Central News Agency was stopped and questioned in neighborhoods close to Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery, and was informed there were no interviews arranged for the day's events and that roads were blocked and impassable. Upon walking to Yuyuan Road Station, which is the stop before Babaoshan Station on the subway, there were police and plainclothes officers with earpieces at every intersection, subway entrance, and pedestrian bridge. They demanded that people not gather, urged them to move quickly, and stopped anyone seen taking out their phones to take pictures. The security was extremely tight. Locals jokingly said that the security and control measures were like “martial law.”
A Beijing resident said Zhu Rongji was a good leader and she was saddened by his passing. She was not specifically there to see Zhu Rongji off; she went for a morning walk in a nearby park and noticed that the north entrance of the park was closed, only then realizing about the event. She sighed, saying that with such roadblocks, even if people wanted to see him off, they couldn’t.
Even under the authorities’ watertight controls, making a repeat of the spontaneous public “farewell along the road” for former Premier Li Keqiang in 2023 impossible, there were still quite a few Beijing residents lingering outside street-facing shops not far from the cemetery, watching the commotion.