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Jun Mai

William Zheng

Meng Fanli, the Communist Party chief of Shenzhen, has been promoted to party chief of Guangdong’s government, a job that effectively makes him the governor-in-waiting of China’s biggest provincial economy.
Meng, 60, was moved to Guangdong in 2022, when he was assigned to be the party chief of Shenzhen, according to the social media account of Nanfang Daily, the province’s official news outlet.
The title of party chief of the provincial government doubles with the position of governor, and Meng’s appointment to that role is expected to be confirmed by the provincial legislature soon.

Meng is filling the vacancy left by governor Wang Weizhong, who was promoted to party chief of Inner Mongolia on Tuesday.
Wang, 63, was appointed to the Guangdong governorship in 2021, after four years as the party chief of Shenzhen.
Tuesday’s announcements came a day after President Xi Jinping chaired the monthly Politburo meeting, a gathering that is often a window on personnel changes at the provincial level and above.
Shenzhen’s economy faced both internal and external challenges at the start of Meng’s term, with the city’s economic growth slowing to 3.3 per cent in 2022, hit by the triple whammy of the Covid-19 pandemic, a property downturn and the painful adjustments of the China-US trade war.
Despite the slower growth, Shenzhen – which has nurtured the likes of Huawei Technologies, Tencent and BYD – unseated Shanghai as China’s biggest manufacturing city that year.
The hi-tech powerhouse regained momentum with a series of policy adjustments, growing 6 per cent and 5.8 per cent in the next two years, respectively. It registered 5.1 per cent growth in GDP for the first half of this year.
The tech hub, with a GDP of more than 1.83 trillion yuan (US$257 billion), ranks third in China’s mega cities, after Shanghai and Beijing.


Meng, 60, is a native of Linyi in the eastern province of Shandong. He was parachuted into Shenzhen’s top job in April 2022 from the post of deputy party secretary of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region in north China.
He worked for more than three decades in his home province, where he served in leading positions at Shandong Luxin Investment Holdings Group, a provincial financial investment platform, as well as the province’s commerce department, and the municipalities of Yantai and Qingdao.
In September 2020, Meng was transferred to Inner Mongolia to serve as party secretary of Baotou, a mining and industrial base in the region. He was promoted to deputy party boss of the region in November 2021, a post he held until his move to Shenzhen.
Wang started his career in the Ministry of Water Resources after graduating from Tsinghua University in 1984 with a degree in water conservancy engineering. He spent two decades in China’s top science and technology administration, rising to deputy science and technology minister in 2010.
In 2014, Wang was transferred to his first regional role, serving as party chief of Taiyuan, the provincial capital of Shanxi in central China. He headed south to Guangdong in 2017, where he took over the Shenzhen party boss role.
Wang’s predecessor, Sun Shaocheng, has reached 65, the retirement age for provincial and ministerial officials who are not advancing to higher ranks.
Also on Tuesday, Jiangsu governor Xu Kunlin, 60, was promoted to party secretary of Liaoning province, taking over from Hao Peng, who is retiring.
Suzhou party chief Liu Xiaotao is expected to replace Xu.
Xu hails from Fujian province and has been seen as a rising political star with vast experience in national economic planning bodies.
He started his career at the former National Price Bureau in 1984 after graduating from the then Hangzhou Business School with a degree in statistics.
He was rotated to various economic planning agencies, including the former State Planning Commission and later, the National Development and Reform Commission, where he worked for more than three decades.
Xu’s first regional posting was Shanghai, where he was named deputy mayor in charge of foreign investment, trade and commerce in 2017.
In 2020, he was promoted to party chief of Jiangsu’s capital, Suzhou, before being promoted to provincial governor in January 2022.


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Politics

The former party chief of economic powerhouse Shenzhen, Meng Fanli, has been promoted, according to official media report


The former party chief of economic powerhouse Shenzhen, Meng Fanli, has been promoted, according to official media report.


Greater Bay Area

Shenzhen

China’s largest provincial economy, Guangdong, has new governor-in-waiting

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}The former party chief of economic powerhouse Shenzhen, Meng Fanli, has been promoted, according to official media report

The former party chief of economic powerhouse Shenzhen, Meng Fanli, has been promoted, according to official media report