Xu Qiliang: No time to die
How long can you expect to live if you’re in the Politburo?
Xu Qiliang (许其亮) died on June 2nd, aged 75.[1] General Xu was a Politburo member of the 18th and 19thCentral Committees (2012-22), and concurrently served as a deputy chair on the Central Military Commission (CMC). Xu stepped down at the 20th Congress in October 2022 aged 72, while his fellow CMC deputy Zhang Youxia (张又侠, then also aged 72) stayed on. Thus Zhang, famously, broke the age convention of retiring once you’re older than 68.
A man of humble origins, Xu rose up through the air force, famously leading the flyover during Deng Xiaoping’s military parade in 1984. He rose rapidly in the 1980-90s as part of the People’s Liberation Army’s youth talent program, and at 49 years old he’d already made deputy military region (大区) rank in Shenyang (normally you need to wait till you’re well over 50). When Hu Jintao (胡锦涛) was trying to grapple control over the PLA, Xu reportedly helped, and one of Hu’s final acts was to promote him into vice CMC chair.[2] As Xi Jinping (习近平) moved against the corrupt generals, again, Xu reportedly helped. The reorganisation of the Second Artillery Corps into the Rocket Force is said to have Xu’s fingerprints all over it (something that probably did not endear him to Zhang Youxia).
Given the turmoil in the upper ranks of the PLA, there has been mucho speculation of whether Xu died of natural causes, or not. “75 is too young for a Politburo member to die!”, I kept hearing last week. (For his/her/their part, Youshu would be very happy to make it to 75, especially considering the lack of Politburo-level health insurance.)
Xu got the full honours send-off at Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery (八宝山革命公墓). The whole Politburo turned up, they all bowed, all broadcast on CCTV evening news (新闻联播).[3] We were told that Xu was “an outstanding party member, a time-tested and loyal communist fighter, a proletarian military strategist, and an outstanding leader of the Chinese People's Liberation Army (优秀党员, 久经考验的忠诚的共产主义战士, 无产阶级军事家, 中国人民解放军的卓越领导人)”. Nothing there to suggest he died under a cloud.[4]
Which begs the question: When do Politburo members usually die?
I charted a boxplot of the age of death of members of the Politburos from the 12th to 19th Central Committees. The box includes the 25th to 75th percentiles, while the whiskers show the bottom and top quartiles. The line in the box is the median age at death: 88. (Edit: June 19th, corrected chart for Chen Yun.)
So, Xu dying at 75 years old is early, but it’s well inside the bottom quartile. There are real outliers (marked by the dots): both Li Keqiang and Huang Ju died aged 68. The former was apparently a heart attack, while Huang was widely thought to be done in by pancreatic cancer. Obviously there’s mucho controversy over Premier Li’s very early death. Probably as ill-founded as over Xu’s but with greater statistical support.
A final point. My chart does not include living Politburo members, many of whom (looking at you Song Ping!) are getting ridiculously old. As they shuffle off to meet Marx, they will push the distribution older.
[1] An official biography can be found here: Xinhua, ‘许其亮同志生平 [Comrade Xu Qiliang’s Life]’, 8 June 2025, https://archive.ph/CGEjS, https://news.cctv.com/2025/06/08/ARTIpdUlWe5LV75OpQO4LlAl250608.shtml.
[2] There were five of them as Xi took over in 2007.
[3] ‘许其亮同志遗体在京火化 [Comrade Xu Qiliang’s Body Was Cremated in Beijing]’, CCTV Evening News [新闻联播], 8 June 2025, https://archive.ph/GVFLE, https://tv.cctv.com/2025/06/08/VIDELxlXI1OSqWbBKC5Wl7lT250608.shtml?spm=C31267.PXDaChrrDGdt.EbD5Beq0unIQ.7.
[4] I’ll leave it to others to speculate as to who might want Xu gone.
There were also a lot of rumors about Chen Xiaolu’s death.
Men do die in their mid-70s!
What intrigues me is the widespread belief among the Chinese upper class that political murder is quite a plausible explanation for what anyone else might consider normal age- or illness-related deaths.
Your chart says Chen Yun died in his 70s. Actually Chen Yun died in 1995 at the age of 90.