As a Party secretary of Lankao County in Henan, Jiao Yulu worked to fight the county’s floods, sandstorms and salt-alkali soil, and died of liver cancer on May 14, 1964, still in office.
The Party named him “a model for county Party secretaries.” In 1990, People’s Daily published an editorial titled “Leading cadres must learn from Jiao Yulu.” In March 2014, Xi Jinping visited his memorial in Lankao.