Jiang Mianheng, son of former president Jiang Zemin, steps down from top academy

Jiang Mianheng, the elder son of former president Jiang Zemin, has stepped down as president of the Shanghai branch of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) due to "age reasons".

Jiang, 63, would be replaced by Zhu Zhiyuan , a 55-year-old physicist, the institute said on its official website yesterday.

The appointment was made during an internal meeting on Tuesday.

"Jiang Mianheng will no longer serve as president of the CAS Shanghai branch due to age reasons," an official statement quoted Zhan Wenlong , a deputy president at the academy, as saying during the meeting.

Jiang said in his departing speech that he supported the reshuffle and called on the academy to continue its support of ShanghaiTech University, a new college cofounded by the Shanghai government and the academy. It is not clear whether Jiang continued to serve as president of the school, a post he took up last February.

The retiring age for an official in Jiang's rank, equal to deputy minister, is usually 60, according to Communist Party rules

Jiang, who holds a PhD in electrical engineering from Drexel University in the United States, joined the academy's Shanghai Institute of Metallurgy after returning to the mainland in 1993. He became academy deputy president six years later and also was made its Shanghai head in 2005.

He had been tipped to take the helm of the academy but the job eventually went to another scientist, Bai Chunli, in 2011. Jiang stepped down as the deputy president around the same time.