Provincial chiefs named as a new generation steps up
Beijing appoints party bosses and four governors in key regions, as official confirms appointment of new negotiator for Taiwan
A number of new provincial Communist Party bosses were appointed yesterday, plus four deputy party secretaries expected to succeed provincial governors who have already been given new jobs.
Meanwhile, a Taiwan affairs official from Fuzhou, Fujian , yesterday confirmed speculation that former trade minister Chen Deming would become the mainland's top negotiator with Taiwan.
Zhou Benshun, secretary general of the party's Political and Legal Affairs Commission, has been appointed party chief of Hebei province, succeeding Zhang Qingli , who was made a vice-chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference last week.
Zhou, 60, is widely considered a protégé of retired security tsar Zhou Yongkang and a hard-line party official. In a 2011 article published in the party journal Qiushi, he described the concept of civil society as a politically dangerous trap that Western countries wanted to sell to China.
Over in the northern autonomous region of Ningxia , chairwoman-in-waiting Liu Hui is set to become one of the few women in China's governing elite. Liu, 53, was appointed as vice-chairwoman of Ningxia's government last month and had now been appointed the region's deputy party secretary.
Liu, who spent most of her political career in the region's Communist Youth League, is expected to become acting chairwoman of the government until formal confirmation of that role at the region's people's congress meeting early next year.