Yang Baibing, former chief of the General Political Department of the People's Liberation Army, has died at the age of 93.

Yang passed away due to an illness in Beijing on Tuesday afternoon, Xinhua News Agency quoted a statement from the General Office of the Communist Party of China Central Committee as saying.

Yang was a member of the Secretariat of the 13th CPC Central Committee and a Political Bureau member of the 14th CPC Central Committee. He was also the last secretary-general of the Central Military Commission. The commission has not appointed a secretary-general since 1993.

The statement said Yang was an outstanding Party member, a seasoned, loyal Communist fighter, a proletarian revolutionary, and an excellent leader of the PLA's political work.

Born as the 11th child of an open-minded and patriotic landowner in 1920, Yang joined the armed forces led by the CPC in 1938 and became a Party member in that year.

He rose through the ranks during the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression (1937-45) and the following civil war, and was engaged in personnel and political work for the PLA after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949.

During the "cultural revolution" (1966-76), Yang was "persecuted and placed under (illegal) custody", according to a brief introduction to him on the website of the central government.

In 1979, he was appointed deputy director of the political department of the Beijing Military Command, and became director of the PLA General Political Department in 1987.

The next year, Yang was elected a member of the Central Military Commission, China's top military command body, and named secretary-general of the commission in 1989.

Yang was one of the 17 high-ranking commanders conferred with the rank of general or admiral (for the navy) after the PLA resumed the military rank system in 1988. General or admiral is the highest rank that has been conferred on PLA officers since 1988.

In 1992, Yang was elected a member of the Political Bureau of the 14th CPC Central Committee after the Party's 14th National Congress. His service on the Central Military Commission came to an end after the congress.

One of Yang's elder brothers, Yang Shangkun, was also a senior leader of the Party, the central government and the PLA. Thirteen years older than Yang Baibing, Yang Shangkun was the Chinese president from 1988 to 1993 and vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission from 1982 to 1993. He died in 1998 at the age of 92.

zhaolei@chinadaily.com.cn