Former Chinese President Jiang Zemin died on Wednesday afternoon at the age of 96, Chinese state media reported.
Jiang died from leukemia and multiple organ failure in Shanghai at 12:13 pm, the official Xinhua news agency said.
He is one of the major figures of Chinese history in recent decades, he presided over a time where China opened up on a vast scale and saw high-speed growth.
Jiang rose to power after the bloody 1989 crackdown on protestors in and around Beijing's Tiananmen Square, which led to China being ostracised internationally.
The event sparked a bitter power struggle at the top of China's Communist Party between hard-line reactionaries and reformers.
It led to Jiang, who had originally been seen as a plodding bureaucrat, being elevated to high office. He was chosen as a compromise leader, in the hope he would unify hardliners and more liberal elements.
He oversaw the peaceful handover of Hong Kong in 1997, but was criticised for a heavy-handed crackdown on the religious sect Falun Gong in 1999.
