GBA | Shenzhen Secretary to head Guangdong as provincial head departs for Xinjiang

Wang Weizhong

The Party Secretary of Shenzhen, Wang Weizhong, has been appointed to lead Guangdong Province as the previous provincial governor departs to fill another public post in Xinjiang.

At the 38th meeting of the 13th Guangdong Province People’s Congress’ Standing Committee held yesterday, the resignation of the outgoing provincial governor, Ma Xingrui, was accepted.

Ma will relocate to the western Autonomous Region of Xinjiang and work as the member and secretary of the Party Committee for the region and member of the Standing Committee.

At the same session, Wang, deputy secretary of the Guangdong Provincial Committee and party municipal secretary of Shenzhen since 2018, was appointed deputy governor and acting governor of the province.

Meanwhile, the resignations of Lin Keqing and Guo Yonghang, deputy governors of the province, were accepted by the Standing Committee. Guo only took office at the provincial level in October this year. Upon his resignation, he was appointed as deputy and acting major of Guangzhou, the provincial capital of Guangdong.

Ma’s resignation from the post and relocation to Xinjiang has come as a surprise to the Macau government. The outgoing provincial leader was only appointed as a director of the Management Committee of the Guangdong-Macao Intensive Cooperation Zone in Hengqin in September this year, the other director being Chief Executive Ho Iat Seng.

Born in Shandong province in 1959, Ma entered the Communist Party of China in 1988. He holds a PhD in engineering and is an academic at the International Academy of Astronautics.

Wang was born in 1962 and is a native of Shanxi Province. He entered the Party in 1983 and holds a PhD in management. He was appointed as the deputy minister of the Ministry of Science and Technology in 2010, and took up his appointment in Guangdong in 2017.