Beijing names new party chief for Yunnan

Beijing has announced a reshuffle at the top of the Yunnan hierarchy amid graft investigations into the activities of several serving and former senior officials in the province.

State media reported yesterday that provincial Communist Party boss Qin Guangrong would be replaced by governor Li Jiheng, without specifying Qin's new job.

Qin, born in 1950, is barely a year off the official retirement age for his rank, and speculation was rife yesterday that he could become deputy head of the party's Working Committee of Organs Directly Under the State Council, based in Beijing.

At the same time, Chen Hao, 60, a deputy chairman and party chief of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions, had been appointed Yunnan's deputy party chief, the China News Service reported, paving the way for him to take over as governor.

Qin's predecessor, Bai Enpei, left Yunnan for a post in Beijing in 2011 before he came under investigation from the party watchdog, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, in late August. Bai was a vice-chairman of the national legislature's environment and resource protection panel until his detention.

Sources said that Bai and a number of senior party cadres, including sacked Hainan executive deputy governor Tan Li, were implicated in the case of Liu Han, a gangster Sichuan mining tycoon who was sentenced to death for a string of convictions, including murder.