(Bloomberg) — China has named Beijing Mayor Chen Jining the new Communist Party leader of Shanghai, a move that comes as the Asian nation reshuffles key leaders following a congress that President Xi Jinping used to consolidate power.
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Chen replaces Li Qiang as party secretary of the financial hub of 25 million people, the official Xinhua News Agency reported Friday.
Li was chosen by Xi as the No. 2 official in China’s hierarchy despite his oversight of a strict two-month lockdown of the financial hub, when some people had trouble getting food and medicine. Li would no longer serve as Shanghai’s party leader, the brief Xinhua report said. In China’s opaque system of government, a party secretary of a city has more sway than its mayor.
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Chen, 58, was named to the 24-member Politburo at the twice-a-decade party congress that ended last weekend. That event saw Xi set himself up for more time in power and stack both the Politburo and the more powerful Politburo Standing Committee with loyalists to a degree that rattled markets.
Chen was named acting mayor of the Chinese capital in 2017 after serving as president of Tsinghua University and environment minister. In 2018, he announced plans to improve Beijing’s air quality, which had become a source of public concern due to periods of severe pollution. Those efforts have paid dividends, as natural gas replaced coal in home heating and industrial use.
Yin Yong, the current deputy party chief of Beijing, was also appointed vice and acting mayor of the capital. The Harvard-educated official was named as one of the 205 full members of the Central Committee last week, and had been tipped to be next central bank governor.
While at the People’s Bank of China, Yin made an unusually large career jump in 2015 to become assistant governor, a position once held by the bank’s current governor Yi Gang.
–With assistance from Sarah Zheng and Charlie Zhu.
(Updates with details of Yin Yong’s appointment as acting Beijing mayor in final paragraphs.)
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