In the hi-tech hot seat: new mayor to head ‘China’s Silicon Valley’

Chen Rugui, the first Guangdong native to be Shenzhen’s mayor in nearly three decades, will have a key role in upgrading the city’s innovation credentials

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epa06042264 Cars drive past commercial buildings in the business district of Shenzhen, China, 21 June 2017 (issued 22 June 2017). Shenzhen, just north of Hong Kong, is part of China's urbanization push called the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macau Greater Bay Area. It encompasses 11 cities including Hong Kong, Macao, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Foshan, Zhongshan, Dongguan, Huizhou, Jiangmen and Zhaoqing. The combined GDP of China's 56,500 square kilometer Bay Area reached 1.36 trillion US dollars in 2016, with an estimated population of 66.71 million. EPA/STR

Published: 11:30pm, 20 Jul 2017Updated: 11:40pm, 20 Jul 2017

A Guangdong-based veteran bureaucrat, who worked his way up the Communist Party’s hierarchy in the Pearl River Delta, was on Thursday named acting mayor of Shenzhen, the first native of the province to head the hub in 27 years.

Chen Rugui, 55, party chief of Zhongshan, a manufacturing hub in the west of the delta, took office at a meeting of the Shenzhen municipal people’s congress, government-run Shenzhen Special Zone Daily reported on its microblog.

The position has been vacant since April when city mayor and party boss Xu Qin, 56 was promoted to be governor of Hebei province.

Chen Rugui is the first Guangdong native to head Shenzhen in 27 years. Photo: Xinhua

Chen graduated from Central South University in Hunan with a master’s in applied geophysics and started working in Guangzhou in 1989. He became deputy party secretary of the Guangzhou Housing and Urban-Rural Construction Committee in 2003 before going on to hold a series of senior jobs in government in Guangzhou.

In September, he was appointed party head of Zhongshan.