Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has reshuffled top provincial-level Chinese Communist Party posts as he seeks to place his men in key positions ahead of a five-yearly congress next year, and more new appointments are likely soon.
The party congress, expected to be held next autumn, will see Xi further cement his hold on power by appointing close allies into the party’s ruling inner core, the 25-member politburo and the seven-member Politburo Standing Committee.
Xi, who doubles as party and military chief, is ranked No. 1 in the Politburo Standing Committee — the apex of power in China.
The year leading up to that will focus on Xi appointing more new people into major provincial party and government positions, sources with ties to the leadership said.
In a brief dispatch on Sunday, the official Xinhua news agency named two people with whom Xi had previously worked as the new party chiefs in strategically located southwestern Yunnan Province and populous southern Hunan Province.
Provincial party chiefs outrank governors.
In Yunnan, bordering Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam, Chen Hao (陳豪) replaced Li Jiheng (李紀恆), while in Hunan, Du Jiahao (杜家豪) assumed the party’s top job, Xinhua said.
Both Chen and Du worked with Xi when he ran China’s commercial capital, Shanghai, as its party chief for a year in 2007, according to their resumes.
“Xi is close to both of them due to their time together in Shanghai,” a source with ties to the leadership told reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Tibet, considered one of the country’s most politically sensitive positions due to periodic anti-Chinese unrest in the devoutly Buddhist Himalayan region, also has a new party chief, named by Xinhua as Wu Yingjie (吳英杰).
Wu has spent almost his entire career in Tibet, according to his official resume, having previously served as a deputy governor and propaganda chief, among other roles.
Wu, like his predecessor Chen Quanguo (陳全國), belongs to China’s majority Han Chinese ethnic group.
Xinhua said Chen would be taking another position, without giving further details.
China says its rule has brought prosperity and stability to Tibet, rejecting claims from Tibetan exiles and rights groups of widespread repression.
The source said Chen would likely go to Xinjiang, another unruly part of the country, due to what the government says is a concerted campaign of violence in a region with a large ethnic minority Muslim population.
The current party boss, Zhang Chunxian (張春賢), is expected to move to Beijing to take over a senior role in a party building committee that Xi is overseeing as part of his efforts to instill greater discipline in the corruption-racked party, the source added.
A second source said the governor in Shanxi, a coal-rich northern province beset by corruption scandals, would move to Beijing to take over as minister of transport.
Li Xiaopeng (李小鵬) is the son of former Chinese premier Li Peng (李鵬), who was deeply involved in the military crackdown on student-led demonstrations around Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989.
The second source said Xi ally Lou Yangsheng (樓陽生), currently a deputy party boss in Shanxi, would be named acting provincial governor, pending approval by the local legislature.
Xi and Lou worked together when Xi was party boss in the eastern Zhejiang Province from 2003 until early 2007.
The Chinese State Council Information Office, which doubles as the party spokesman’s office, did not respond to a request for comment.
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