China says top Macau official falls to death from building

BEIJING – China’s head representative to Macau died after a fall from his residential building, the central government said Sunday.

Zheng Xiaosong, the director of China’s liaison office in semiautonomous Macau, was suffering from depression, according to the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office of China’s State Council.

Zheng, 59, died on Saturday evening at the building where he lived. The statement did not give further details.

He assumed his post last September and was part of the ruling Communist Party’s elite Central Committee. A notice on the liaison office’s website said Zheng was still working on Friday, when he met with representatives of a think-tank .

Like Hong Kong, Macau has a separate legal system from mainland China.

The former Portuguese territory’s economy has boomed over the past decade as supercharged growth in the casino industry transformed the seedy backwater into a glitzy gambling powerhouse.