Mongol ally of incoming premier to become chief of State Council
Incoming premier picks Yang Jing as his right-hand man and the first cabinet secretary general from an ethnic minority
Yang Jing, an ally of incoming premier Li Keqiang , is poised to become secretary general of the State Council in Li's cabinet, to be unveiled next week.
The secretary general takes care of the cabinet's daily work as the premier's right-hand man. The position will allow Yang, a Mongol, who currently heads the State Ethnic Affairs Commission and a member of the party's powerful Secretariat of the Central Committee, to work more closely with Li.
"He [Yang] will be named secretary general of the State Council very soon," Ren Yaping, chairman of Inner Mongolian regional people's political consultative conference, said on the sidelines of the annual session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in Beijing this week.
Yang will be named secretary general of the State Council very soon
Yang will be the first secretary general from an ethnic minority background.
The new cabinet line-up - including four vice-premiers, five state councillors, ministers and heads of central government agencies - will be unveiled on March 16, the second last day of the annual session of the National People's Congress.
As secretary general, Yang will automatically become a state councillor. Other frontrunners to become state councillors, who rank between vice-premiers and ministers, include Public Security Minister Guo Shengkun , defence minister-in-waiting General Chang Wanquan , outgoing Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi and Wang Yong , chairman of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission.
Yang Jing has long been considered one of Li's closest allies. He served as the Inner Mongolia regional chief of the Communist Youth League between 1993 and 1996, while Li was the league's first secretary from 1993 to 1998.