Wang Daohan, China's top negotiator with Taiwan and a one-time Shanghai mayor and mentor to former Communist Party chief Jiang Zemin, died on Saturday in Shanghai, the official Xinhua news agency said. He was 90.
Xinhua did not provide details on the cause of death for Wang, whose official title was president of the mainland-based Association for Relations Across the Taiwan Strait.
Wang's death comes almost exactly a year after that of his Taiwan counterpart, Koo Chen-fu, who died of cancer in January at the age of 87.
Wang's group sent a contingent to Koo's funeral earlier this year.
Born in 1915 in eastern China's Anhui province, Wang rose to prominence during his tenure as mayor of Shanghai from 1980 to 1985, before going on to teach economics at major universities in both Shanghai and Beijing.
Wang was instrumental in starting rapprochement between China and Taiwan - political rivals since the end of the Chinese civil war in 1949 - in the early 1990s.