(XINHUA)

Norodom Sihanouk, former king of Cambodia, died after battling cancer, diabetes and hypertension in Beijing at the age of 90 on October 15.

Sihanouk was king of Cambodia twice, from 1941 to 1955 and again from 1993 until he abdicated in 2004. He led Cambodia to independence from France and inaugurated a rare period of political stability during the first period of his reign.

The friendship between Sihanouk and Chinese leaders started at the 1955 Bandung Conference, when he held private meetings with China's then Premier Zhou Enlai. Having lived in exile in China, Sihanouk often referred to the country as his "second homeland," and it was from China that he received political support in times of adversity and almost all his medical treatment in the last years of his life after being diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1994.

The Sihanouk pair has donated disaster relief funds to China almost every year, between $50,000 and $100,000 each time.