Guangdong yesterday confirmed the vice-governorships of Li Ronggen and Li Hongzhong on the final day of the provincial People's Congress. Zhang Guoying becomes Guangdong's new People's Congress chairwoman, replacing Zhu Senlin.
Li Ronggen, 50, inherits the agriculture brief of Ou Guangyuan, who became executive vice-governor after Wang Qishan returned to Beijing in December to head the State Council's Economic Restructuring Office. Li Hongzhong, 44, Guangdong's youngest vice-governor, will be responsible for science and education.
The appointment of Li Ronggen, a Shenzhen native, is considered unusual in that he had last been chairman of the Shenzhen People's Political Consultative Conference. Officials either too old or going nowhere are often put out to pasture in the largely ceremonial political consultative conferences.
Li Ronggen has spent his entire career in Shenzhen - most of it in Baoan county. From 1995 until last year he served as a party deputy secretary in the Special Economic Zone.
Li Hongzhong, originally from Shandong province, spent the early years of his career in Shenyang, the capital of Liaoning province, and the then-electronics industry ministry in Beijing in the mid-1980s. He was transferred to the Pearl River Delta city of Huizhou in 1988, where he has served as mayor and party secretary. In the summer of 1999, Li Hongzhong studied for a short period at Harvard.
The new chairwoman of the Guangdong People's Congress, Ms Zhang, 63, hails from Dongguan. She spent her early career with the Posts and Telecommunications Department in Hainan province, before being transferred back to Guangdong in 1973. Ms Zhang was appointed a vice-chairwoman of the Guangdong People's Congress in 1998, and has also served as a provincial deputy party secretary.