Bo Yibo, 98, Last of China's ‘Eight Immortals'

Bo Yibo, the last of the "Eight Immortals" who led China through the 1970s and '80s, has died, the official news agency Xinhua announced yesterday. He was 98.

Bo was a veteran of the 1949 Communist revolution and a former vice premier.

He was the last of the "Eight Immortals," the group of revolutionary veterans who included supreme leader Deng Xiaoping and led China through the launch of economic reforms in 1979 and the upheaval of 1989, the year of the Tiananmen Square prodemocracy protests.

Bo, described as a conservative, was believed to be a supporter of the decision to use soldiers to crush the protests. He was close to Deng and supported faster economic liberalization.