BEIJING, Oct 25: One of China’s first Communist generals and a veteran of the Long March has died at the age of 102, state media said on Saturday.

General Xiao Ke, a former vice defence minister, died in Beijing on Friday, Xinhua news agency said.

Xiao, also a writer, was “an excellent member of the Communist Party of China, a time-tested, faithful Communist fighter, and a proletarian revolutionary and militarist”, Xinhua quoted an official press release as saying.

Xiao was a hero of the 1934-35 Long March, the tactical retreat of the Communist Party forces from Nationalist troops which led to the rise of Mao Zedong and the birth of Communist China in 1949.

In 1955 Xiao became a general when the People’s Republic of China introduced military rankings for the first time. Only one other general from that time is still alive.

Criticised for opposing Mao’s chaotic 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, he later became a deputy defence minister and head of the Military Academy.

—Reuters