MADISON — Following former Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji’s recent death at the age of 97, homages poured in for a man widely credited with championing the market-oriented reforms that drove decades of rapid economic growth. Yet the two most emblematic reforms of his tenure, a 1994 tax-sharing policy and China’s 2001 accession to the World Trade Organization, did not only fuel robust growth. They also reshaped and partly distorted China’s economic structure and the global economy more broadly, with profound and lasting implications for the country’s political and demographic outlook. After launching the first market-oriented reforms, China pursued fiscal decentralization policies that increased household disposable income as a share of GDP from 44 percent in 1978 to 62 percent in 1983. As these reforms unleashed greater dynamism in the private economy, popular demands for democracy grew as well. Combined with an unusually high share of 15- to 29-year-olds, a demographic group that is especially likely to drive social change, these factors ultimately contributed to the 1989 pro-d