Widely recognized as the iron-willed architect of China's modern market economy, former premier Zhu Rongji passed away in Beijing yesterday at the age of 98. His tenure as premier from 1998 to 2003 was marked by a dramatic transformation of the country's fiscal, financial, and administrative structures. By dismantling rigid centralized planning in favor of a modern, globalized market system, Zhu established the institutional bedrock for China's meteoric rise into the world's second-largest economy.