The death of Huang Ju, a Chinese Vice-Premier, brings an end to the career of a Communist Party official best known for overseeing the rebirth of Shanghai as one of the most glittering cities in Asia.

Huang was the sixth highest-ranking official in China and a member of the Standing Committee of the party’s Politburo, the top decision-making body in the world’s most populous nation. An official obituary described him as “a long-tested and faithful Communist fighter and an outstanding leader of the party and the state”.

As China’s First Vice-Premier, Huang had been in charge of economic and financial policies, including reforms of state-owned companies. However, he had disappeared from public view more than a year ago, amid reports that he was ill with pancreatic cancer (never officially confirmed), and for several months Vice-Premier Wu Yi and other officials have been handling many of his responsibilities. His death while in office is expected to have little impact on day-to-day administration.

Huang, a relatively soft-spoken and camera-shy official, was best known as a close ally of the former President and party chief, Jiang Zemin, whose power-base was formed around his “Shanghai clique”. Indeed, it was this relationship, rather than any particular policies or reforms, that defined his role.

Both were Shanghai party leaders, Jiang in the 1980s and Huang in the 1990s. Huang worked for several years with Jiang and when the latter stepped down as party leader in 2002 to makeway forPresident Hu Jintao,Huang was among a handful of allies whom Jiang manoeuvred into the party’s inner sanctum – the nine-member Politburo Standing Committee – to safeguard his influence and legacy.

His death will be a setback for any attempt by Jiang to wield his influence over a five-yearly party congress set for the autumn. These meetings are an occasion for fierce infighting as rivals jostle behind the scenes to appoint their protégés to the powerful Central Committee or even to seats on the Politburo.

Hu has an opportunity to consolidate his hold on power by filling Huang’s position with a supporter. It is unclear though whether Hu, who has been unrivalled party chief for nearly five years, will move to fill the seat before the congress. He may want to reduce the size of the Standing Committee to seven members or even to five, thus ensuring that only his closest allies have a place.

Born in 1938 in the eastern coastal province of Zhejiang, Huang joined the party when he was 24 years old. He was educated at Beijing’s elite Tsinghua University, where he graduated with a degree in engineering. He began work as a technician for the Shanghai Artificial Board-Making Machinery Plant and then took on increasingly important positions in Shanghai state enterprises.

He was appointed mayor of the city in 1991 and three years later to the top job, that of party chief. He held that post until 2002 when he was promoted to the Standing Committee. During his watch, Shanghai recorded years of double-digit growth and launched a series of huge infrastructure projects. The metropolis was transformed into one of the glitziest cities in China, if not in Asia.

Nevertheless, he was not a popular mayor, and associates in Shanghai have described him as controlling and politically savvy with a photographic memory.

Many Shanghainese associate Huang with rumours of corruption. His successor, Chen Liangyu, was sacked last year for alleged misuse of the city’s pension fund and speculation had been rife that Huang’s close association with his successor could stall his career.

One of his last significant international appearances was at the 2005 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. He said then that China’s per capita income would triple in the next 15 years and he sought to reassure the world that there was no reason to fear his country’s appearance as a global giant.

His last public appearance was at the annual session of parliament, the National People’s Congress, in March, when he made a surprise visit to the Shanghai delegation and urged them to support the anticorruption drive by President Hu that had recently toppled the city’s party boss. He appeared pale, and Chinese sources said he was already so ill that he had to be brought into the Great Hall of the People in a wheelchair but insisted on walking unaided to the meetings.

He is survived by his wife, a son and a daughter.

Huang Ju, politician, was born in September 1938. He died on June 2, 2007, aged 68