Chen Shunyao

Chen Shunyao (; September 1917 – 31 July 2019) was a Chinese politician and academic administrator. She served as deputy party secretary of Tsinghua University, and was a delegate to the First and Third National People's Congresses. She was the wife of the high-ranking Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Song Ping, a former member of the CCP Politburo Standing Committee.

Republic of China Chen was born in September 1917 in Jinan, Shandong, Republic of China, with her ancestral home in Fuzhou, Fujian. In September 1936, she entered the Department of Civil Engineering of Tsinghua University, where she met her future husband Song Ping, a chemistry student and activist in the December 9th Movement against Japanese aggression in China.

In 1961, she was transferred to Northwest China and served as vice minister of propaganda of Gansu Province. She returned to Beijing in 1981, and worked in the Research Office of the Secretariat of the Chinese Communist Party until her retirement in 1988.

Personal life Chen's younger brother, Chen Junwu, was a petroleum chemist and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Chen died on 31 July 2019 in Beijing, at the age of 101 from lung cancer. Her funeral was held on 3 August 2019. She was buried at Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery in Beijing near her parents, two brothers and four sisters.