China to add retired Jiang's works to pantheon-paper

BEIJING, Aug 8 (Reuters) China is preparing to publish the works of retired leader Jiang Zemin at a time when the former Communist Party chief is lifting his profile in an apparent bid to reassert influence.

Three volumes of Jiang's speeches and writings will appear in bookstores as early as Thursday, a mainland controlled Hong Kong newspaper, Ta Kung Pao, reported today.

''The publishing of Jiang's Selected Works is a major event in Chinese political life,'' the chief of the national publishing administration, Long Xinmin, told staff yesterday at the People's Publishing House, which is printing the books, according to the paper.

Officials at the Publishing House have told Reuters the books will be issued soon, after many years of preparation, but they gave no precise date.

Jiang's words have appeared in many books over the years, but the appearance of a Selected Works would place him in the same league as the Communist icons Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, whose Works remain pillars of party ideological training.

Jiang was General Secretary of the ruling Communist Party for 13 years after the patriarch Deng installed him in the aftermath of the bloody 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy protests.

Jiang retired as party chief in 2002, but several members of the party's ruling inner-circle are his proteges and he stayed on as chairman of the Central Military Commission till 2004.

Beijing observers say Jiang, now 79 years old, lacks the clout to dictate China's fifth-generation leader -- after Mao, Deng, Jiang and Hu -- at a congress expected next year, but he wants to be consulted and has used a series of appearances in past months to remind officials that he remains a presence.

REUTERS DH RK0635