BEIJING: Chinese Communist Party (CCP) elder and the longest-lived member of the elite Politburo Standing Comm­ittee, Song Ping, died on Wednesday at the age of 109, the official Xinhua news agency reported.

Song died in Beijing due to illness, according to Xinhua.

Born in 1917, Song was at the core of the communist party’s second generation of leadership, an era when reform-minded Deng Xiaoping remade China after the 27-year rule of Mao Zedong.

Song was credited with bringing Hu Jintao, China’s leader before current President Xi Jinping, to the attention of Deng.

Song was in the Politburo Standing Committee, the apex of power in China’s political system, from 1989 to 1992. Earlier, he had worked in key party and government posts.

He had worked as a personal secretary of Zhou Enlai, who served as communist China’s first premier from 1949 until his death in 1976.

Published in Dawn, March 5th, 2026