HONOLULU — A longtime Associated Press correspondent who won renown for his reports on Mao Zedong and other Communist guerrilla leaders has died. John Roderick was 93.

Roderick spent his last days in his Honolulu apartment gathering close friends to his bedside for final farewells, smiling and nodding when his weakened condition from congenital heart failure and pneumonia prevented speech.

He was an avid journalist to the end, writing his final piece for AP in February and completing a memoir about his restored farmhouse in Kamakura, Japan.

Roderick was a leading China-watcher for decades. He covered the country from its pre-revolution days to the economic reforms of the 1980s.

Associated Press CEO Tom Curley said Roderick inspired a generation of younger AP correspondents and his loss is deeply felt.