Renowned surgeon passes at 101

Xin Yuling, a pioneer of thoracic surgery in China and the first president of the China-Japan Friendship Hospital in Beijing passed away Tuesday evening at the age of 101 in the capital, the hospital said in an obituary on Wednesday.

The surgeon was awarded the July 1 Medal, the Communist Party of China's highest honor, last year for his contribution to the country's medical sector.

Xin was born in 1921 in Hebei province and he has been a Party member since 1939.

He joined the Eighth Route Army in 1938 and the next year he was sent to join the medical team of Henry Norman Bethune, the well-known Canadian doctor who served alongside the army during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1931-45).

In 1951, he was sent to the Soviet Union to study medicine as part of the first group of Chinese students sent abroad by the government, and returned to the country five years later with a doctoral degree. He than worked in an institution in Beijing to establish a thoracic surgery department.

From 1958 to 1980, he trained more than 1,000 thoracic surgeons and guided more than 40 hospitals to establish thoracic surgery wings, as many provinces in China were not equipped with them at the time.

In 1982, Xin was assigned to lead the construction of the China-Japan Friendship Hospital and then became its first president.