Top retired Chinese general Xu Qiliang dies of illness: state media

BEIJING (Reuters) -Top Chinese general Xu Qiliang, a close ally of President Xi Jinping who was the former vice chair of the powerful Central Military Commission, died of illness at age 75 on Monday in Beijing, state media reported.

Xu served two consecutive terms on the Communist Party's highest military command body between 2012 and 2022, as Xi came to power. Before that, he spent decades in the People's Liberation Army (PLA) air force, rising to Air Force Commander in 2007 after a stint in the PLA General Staff Department.

Xu was described as an "outstanding member of the Communist Party" and an "outstanding leader of the People's Liberation Army" in a short obituary published on Monday by state news agency Xinhua.

He was the first Central Military Commission (CMC) vice chair not to have been from the land forces, a sign of Beijing's growing emphasis on different branches of the military as the PLA pursues combat integration and modernisation.

He emerged seemingly unscathed by the anti-corruption campaign targeting the highest ranks of the PLA soon after Xi came into office, which took down his predecessors Xu Caihou and Guo Boxiong, both vice-chairs of the CMC.

China's military has undergone a renewed anti-corruption purge since last year, with over a dozen PLA generals including two former defence ministers and a serving CMC member, Miao Hua, removed or suspended from their posts.

Born into a peasant family in eastern China's Shandong province, Xu joined the PLA in 1966 at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, a decade-long period of turmoil spearheaded by Mao Zedong.

He was a strong advocate of military modernisation, helping transform the air force from a reliance on outdated equipment to domestically developed stealth fighters and amphibian assault ships.

Xu was commander of an air force unit in Fuzhou, Fujian province, while Xi was the city's Communist Party chief in the early 1990s. It is during this period that the men were reported to have become close.

(Reporting by Laurie Chen; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)