Rong, born into a rich family in eastern Jiangsu province in 1916, played a pivotal role in China's 1980s economic liberalisation, when he advised then-leader Deng Xiaoping on the reforms credited with pulling a struggling China out of poverty.
Rong was the oldest and wealthiest on a list of China's top 50 rich entrepreneurs compiled by Forbes Magazine in 2000, but Xinhua said he had been officially praised as a "great fighter for patriotism and communism".
Rong, whose son Larry Yung heads Hong Kong-listed CITIC subsidiary CITIC Pacific Ltd, took over a prosperous textile and flour family business in 1940s Shanghai after earning a history degree from the elite church-founded St. John's University there.
Unlike most businessmen at the time, his family refused to flee to Taiwan after the Communists swept to power in 1949. He then won the Communists' trust by co-operating in the confiscation of family assets in the 1950s and was subsequently made a vice-mayor of Shanghai from 1957 to 1966.