Dispute over oldest living person dies with Japan's Jiroemon Kimura

Japan's Jiroemon Kimura, who had been recognised by Guinness World Records as the world's oldest living person and the oldest man ever, died yesterday of natural causes. He was 116.

But there appears to be dispute in China that Kimura was really the world's oldest person - at least before last weekend - when a woman who Chinese officials said was 127 years old died.

Official Chinese documents said that Luo Meizhen was born in 1885, which would make her the oldest person ever to have lived, ahead of Kimura, of Kyotango, Japan, who was born April 19, 1897.

"She was 127 when she died, it wasn't unexpected," her grandson Huang Heyuan said

Luo's 1885 birth date was quoted on her official residency permit and identity card, both issued in recent decades, and was confirmed by a state-sponsored research institute in 2010.

Xinhua ran reports of her 127th birthday celebrations on its website in October, describing her as China's oldest person.

But Luo's claim met with little recognition internationally because China did not have a reliable birth certification system until decades after she was born.