Mayor Han appointed city's Party secretary

  1 of 2   

Han Zheng

More in photo gallery

SHANGHAI Mayor Han Zheng was appointed as the city's Party chief yesterday after serving as mayor since 2003, according to a decision by the Chinese Communist Party's Central Committee.

Han was appointed secretary of the Communist Party of China Shanghai Committee, replacing Yu Zhengsheng.

Yu, 67, has been elected one of the seven members of Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Party's Central Committee.

Han, 58, is credited with guiding Shanghai through the successful World Expo in 2010.

A native of Zhejiang Province which borders Shanghai on the southwest, Han was educated in Shanghai and served his political career so far in the city.

The Party yesterday also named a new leader for the southwestern city of Chongqing.

Sun Zhengcai, 49, a former minister of agriculture before he was named in late 2009 as Jilin Province's Party chief, is now Party chief of Chongqing.

The Party's Central Committee has decided that Sun will no longer serve as secretary of the Party's Jilin Committee.

Sun graduated from Beijing Agriculture University in 1987 and later spent a year as a visiting scholar at Britain's Rothamsted Experimental Station, an agricultural research center based in Hertfordshire.

Later he served as minister of agriculture from 2006 to 2009.

That set him up to take office in Jilin, center of China's corn belt, where he backed increased trade and infrastructure investment in North Korea.

Chongqing's former Party chief Bo Xilai, whose wife Bogu Kailai was given a suspended death sentence in August for murdering British businessman Neil Heywood, was expelled from the Party last month and is in custody awaiting trial for corruption and abuse of power.

Following Bo's dismissal in April, Chongqing has been run by Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang, who was promoted to the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau last week.

Email Story    Printable View    Blog Story    Copy Headline/URL