‍Banker, philanthropist and presidential adviser David Rockefeller died of congestive heart failure on Monday at age 101, a family spokesman said.

David Rockefeller, who was the patriarch of the Rockefeller family, died peacefully in his sleep at his home in Pocantico Hills, spokesman Fraser Seitel said in a statement.

Rockefeller is known in China for a landmark meeting with Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai on the night of June 29, 1973. They talked for more than two hours. Rockefeller was also the first diplomat who ever briefed a Chinese premier on the US economy and its impact on China.

He was the youngest of six children born to John D. Rockefeller Jr. and the grandson of Standard Oil co-founder John D. Rockefeller.

With the passing of his siblings, he became the guardian of his family's fortune and head of a sprawling network of family interests, both business and philanthropic, that ranged from environmental conservation to the arts.

Rockefeller graduated from Harvard in 1936 and received a doctorate in economics from the University of Chicago in 1940. He served in the army during World War Two, then began climbing the ranks of management at Chase Bank. That bank merged with The Manhattan Company in 1955.

He was named Chase Manhattan's president in 1961 and chairman and chief executive officer eight years later. He retired in 1981 at age 65 after a 35-year career.

In his role of business statesman, Rockefeller preached capitalism at home and favored assisting economies abroad on the grounds that bringing prosperity to the Third World would create customers for American products.

He parted company with some of his fellow capitalists on income taxes, calling it unseemly to earn one million dollars and then find ways to avoid paying taxes on it. He didn't say how much he paid in taxes and never spoke publicly about his personal worth.

In 2015, Forbes magazine estimated his fortune at 3 billion dollars.

In the 1970s, his meetings with Anwar el-Sadat of Egypt, Leonid Brezhnev of the Soviet Union and Zhou Enlai of China helped Chase Manhattan become the first American bank with operations in those countries.

“Few people in this country have met as many leaders as I have,” he said.

His philanthropy and other activities earned him a Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, in 1998.

Rockefeller and his wife, the former Margaret McGrath, married in 1940 and had six children -- David Jr., Richard, Abby, Neva, Margaret and Eileen. His wife, a conservationist, died in 1996.