Another ‘princeling’ gets promotion to district chief
Ye Zhonghao, aged 31 and great-grandson of PLA marshal, is following a well-trodden path by starting his political career in a rural areas
The great-grandson of the late PLA Marshal Ye Jianying has been promoted to district chief in Yunfu city in Guangdong, according to the local government website.
Ye Zhonghao, 31, became the head of Yunfu’s High-Tech Industry Development Zone, a major stone industry production and sales base of Guangdong, located about a three-hour drive north of Guangzhou, according to a one-sentence statement released by the city’s Human Resources and Social Security Bureau.
Before that, Ye had been secretary of the Communist Youth League’s committee in Yunfu from 2012.
The Ye family have wielded enormous political and economic influence for decades in the national government, the military and in its power base in Guangdong. Although Ye Zhonghao, the son of former Guangdong governor Ye Xuanping, is only a bureau-level official in a backwater city, this latest promotion has attracted attention from political observers at home and abroad.
Ye Zhonghao is seldom in the limelight: the last previous report about him concerned a visit to a technology financial group in Guangzhou in April.
“You media people should stop speculating about [Ye’s promotion]. Comrade Ye is a very low-profile person,” Liang Yu, an official of Yunfu’s propaganda department, said today.