The official obituary called Huang "an excellent member of the CPC, a long-tested and faithful Communist fighter and an outstanding leader of the Party and the state."

In May this year, the government denied that Huang had died after reports of his death were published in Hong Kong.

Huang had been suffering from pancreatic cancer, but state media said that he died of "illness" without specifying a cause.

UPDATE: From Richard Spencer, blogging Beijing correspondent of The Daily Telegraph:

Huang Ju is finally officially dead

It's a quirky thing, but Mr Huang played a certain and rather odd role in developing China-UK relations...

...I have written in the past about Thames Town, the extraordinary purpose-built suburb in Songjiang, outside Shanghai city proper, built to imitate a British market town.

It has a Georgian square, a Victorian neo-Gothic church, pedestrianised shopping streets, big detached houses with gardens. It has a pub and fish and chip shop next door.

It is one of a string of such places - there is a Dutch town, an Italian one, a German one near the Volkswagen plant and the Formula One racetrack, and so on.

...The thing is, I was told that this was all Mr Huang's personal idea. Not all his officials were convinced. But when the Party boss says we need nine new dormitory towns built to copy European towns, that's what you get.