Liu Yandong, China's Former Vice Premier and a Top Ranking Woman on the Politburo, Dies at 80

Liu Yandong, a former vice premier of China and one of the highest ranking women in the history of the Chinese Communist Party, died in Beijing on Wednesday, October 28, 2026. She was 80. The state run Xinhua news agency announced her death, Reuters reported. Reuters, reporting the Xinhua announcement, gave no cause of death.

Liu sat on the Politburo, the top decision making body of the party, from 2007 to 2017. Reuters described her as the most prominent and highest ranking female official in China during much of her time in the leadership, and as one of only a handful of women ever to serve as a full member of the Politburo since the People's Republic was founded in 1949. The current Politburo has 21 members, and all of them are men, Reuters noted.

Rise through the Youth League

Liu was born on November 22, 1945, in Nantong County, in Jiangsu province. Her father, Liu Ruilong, was one of the founders of the 14th Red Army, an early Communist militia force, and some analysts have classed her as a princeling, a child of a revolutionary family. She entered Tsinghua University in 1964, worked as a part time political instructor while she studied, and graduated in 1970 with a degree in chemistry.

After graduation she worked at a chemical production plant in Tangshan. She moved to party work in Beijing in 1980 and became deputy party secretary of Chaoyang District in 1981. In 1982 she began working for the Communist Youth League, where she stayed for nine years and worked alongside contemporaries who included Hu Jintao, the future party leader. She chaired the All China Youth Federation during that period.

In March 1991 she moved to the United Front Work Department as its deputy secretary general, and while in that job she earned a master's degree and a doctorate, at Renmin University and Jilin University. She took over the department in 2002 and ran it until 2007. In March 2002 she also became a vice chair of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

A decade on the Politburo

Liu entered the Politburo in 2007. After Vice Premier Wu Yi retired, Liu was the highest ranked female politician in China, and she was one of only three women to hold a Politburo seat in her era, alongside Wu Yi and Sun Chunlan. In 2008 the National People's Congress elected her a state councilor. She also served as a deputy chair of the organizing committee for the Beijing Olympic Games.

At the party congress in 2012, Liu won a second term on the Politburo, the first woman since Deng Yingchao to serve consecutive terms on the body. In 2013 she became a vice premier in the government of Premier Li Keqiang, ranked second among the vice premiers, with a wide brief that covered health, education and sports. From 2013 she also led the Leading Group for Health Care Reform.

Her work carried her abroad as well. On April 13, 2009, Stony Brook University in New York conferred an honorary Doctor of Laws degree on her.

Liu retired from politics in 2018. She was married to Yang Yuanxing, the owner of a technology company, and they had one daughter.