Provinces/regions led by post-1960s chiefs
Provinces/regions with newly appointed party chiefs
Source: Xinhua
Newly appointed provincial and regional party chiefs
Wu Zhenlong, 56
One of the youngest in the cohort, Wu has been promoted from
governor to the top role of party secretary in eastern economic
powerhouse Jiangsu.
He rose to prominence after successfully executing a project to
relocate hundreds of thousands of residents to make way for the
Three Gorges Project when he worked at Chongqing’s Wanzhou
district committee in 2002.
Like Wu, Hunan native Li was born in November 1964. He was
promoted to his current role as head of eastern Shandong province
at the end of September, 2021.
Li is a trained engineer and nuclear safety expert. He was also
previously China’s environment minister, and headed a
three-year “green” plan
in 2018 to improve air quality.
Before his latest promotion to head the Tibet autonomous region,
rising political star Wang was security head for the neighbouring
far-west Xinjiang Autonomous Region, and for state-owned
paramilitary organisation Xinjiang Production and Construction
Corps.
He has been on the fast track for promotion in the past decade,
despite being
listed on multiple sanction lists by Western countries.
“As the top man in Tibet, Wang now needs to make decisions not
only on economic developments, but also, perhaps more importantly,
to ensure the stability amid the China-India border tensions,”
said Xie Maosong, a senior researcher with the National Strategy
Institute at Tsinghua University in Beijing.
Previously the party secretary of rust belt Heilongjiang province
in northeast China, Zhang now oversees China’s more significant
industrial power house of central Hunan province.
Like Jiangsu’s Wu, Zhang served for decades in China’s state-owned
machinery and national defence sector.
“Coming from those sectors, they have a better sense of China’s
overall development situation and are usually very committed to
their deliverables,” said Chen Daoyin, a political commentator and
former professor at the Shanghai University of Political Science
and Law.
“They won the trust from the top because they delivered results,
as evidenced by China’s progress in its military and space
developments,” Chen said.
Previously the governor of the northeast province of Liaoning, Liu
was promoted to party secretary of Guangxi in the southwest.
A hydraulic and electric engineering graduate, Liu served nearly
three decades in China’s water resource ministry and was appointed
as deputy water resources minister in 2009.
Liu became the party’s security chief in northwest Qinghai
province in 2017 and rose to become the province’s governor in
2018, but was transferred to Liaoning that same year.
Xu succeeds Zhang Qingwei as party secretary of Heilongjiang.
He was previously the provincial governor of Hebei and a main
driver of its “city of the future” Xiongan New Area – President
Xi’s pet project. He is also one of the key people involved in
China’s 2022 Winter Olympic preparation works.
Xu spent two decades in China’s National Planning Commission – its
top economy planning agency – and was groomed as an administrator
with technical skills.
In 2008, he was transferred to Shenzhen, China’s silicon valley,
and rose to become the city’s party chief in December 2016.
Southeastern Fujian governor Wang has also been promoted to party
secretary of southwest Yunnan province.
As an architect, he spent most of his time in the Ministry of
Construction and then the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural
Development, where he became a vice-minister in July 2013.
He was transferred to Fujian province in December 2015 and
appointed as Fujian provincial governor in September 2020.
He is succeeded in Fujian by Zhao Long, the party chief of
Fujian’s Xiamen city, who at 54 will become the country’s youngest
provincial governor.
In Jiangxi province, Yi has been promoted from governor to party
secretary. At 62, Yi is three years away from the
ministerial-level retirement age. He was the only one above the
age of sixty in this round of promotions.
Yi spent most of his career, which spans more than three decade,
in his home province of Hunan, where he served for 10 years in the
provincial party school until 2004.
He made the first foray into a regional leadership role in Yueyang
and later was appointed to the top party job in Changsha, the
provincial capital of Hunan, in 2013.
He was transferred to Liaoning province in 2017 before he was
transferred again a year later to become provincial governor in
Jiangxi province.
Edited by Melissa ZhuAdditional web development by Dennis WongCreative Director Darren Long
Leave a Reply