Beijing has appointed a new party chief in Tibet as the Communist Party shuffles regional leaders ahead of its 21st national congress.
Hu Changsheng, 62, will serve as the party secretary of Tibet autonomous region, leaving his post as party secretary of Gansu province to Wu Xiaojun, 60, currently the party chief of Qinghai province.
Meanwhile, Luo Dongchuan, 60, Qinghai’s governor, will succeed Wu as party secretary of the province.
The 21st party congress is expected to be held next year and will shape the leadership line-up for the next five years. Leadership changes at the provincial level ahead of the congress could offer clues about the party’s broader personnel arrangements and political line-up.
Hu spent the early years of his career in Sichuan province before transferring to Qinghai in 2015. In 2017, he was reassigned to Fujian province, where he headed the provincial party organisation department. He was appointed party secretary of the city of Xiamen in 2019 and was promoted to deputy party secretary of Fujian in 2020 while continuing as Xiamen’s party secretary.
President Xi Jinping spent more than a decade working in Fujian, where he served as party secretary of the provincial capital Fuzhou from 1990 to 1996, and as the province’s deputy party secretary from 1995 to 2002.
Hu became governor of Heilongjiang province in 2021 and party chief of Gansu in 2022.
Luo, who holds a doctorate in law, has extensive experience within the judicial system, having served in Beijing’s local courts and the Supreme People’s Court. In 2015, he was transferred to the Communist Party’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, where he assumed the role of director of the case trial office.
After his tenure as head of the regional commission for discipline inspection in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region from 2017 to 2018, he returned to the Supreme People’s Court as vice-president, later assuming an additional role as president of its Intellectual Property Court.
Luo also worked in Fujian as chief of the provincial political and legal affairs commission from 2020 to 2021, and as the provincial deputy party secretary from 2021 to 2024.
Luo was transferred to Qinghai where he was appointed deputy party secretary in 2024 and as governor last year.
Wu spent most of his career in Jiangxi province until being relocated to Qinghai in 2021. He was appointed governor of Qinghai in 2022 and party secretary in 2024. -- SOUTH CHINA MORNING POST
