Appointment shows president is cementing grip on power
A deputy party chief in restive Tibet has been appointed head of the influential Communist Youth League in another sign that President Hu Jintao has solidified his grip on power ahead of next year's crucial party congress.
Hu Chunhua , who was working in Tibet when Mr Hu was party secretary in the Himalayan region, will take over from Zhou Qiang , who was appointed governor of the central province of Hunan in October.
'The Central Committee of the Communist Party has recently decided to appoint comrade Hu Chunhua as first secretary of the Communist Youth League, and comrade Zhou Qiang has been relieved of his duty from the position,' the party's decision-making body announced on the central government's website yesterday.
Mr Hu built his power base as head of Tibet and the Communist Youth League before his promotion to the pinnacle of party leadership.
Unrelated to the president, Hu Chunhua, 43, is a native of the central province of Hubei and first started working in Tibet in 1983. He worked as a manager of a state-run hotel in Lhasa , the Tibetan capital, from 1985 to 1987 and became one of Tibet's deputy party secretaries in 2003.