Shenzhen names an ally of party chief Wang Yang its new mayor
Shenzhen appointed a new mayor yesterday, a year after Xu Zongheng was removed amid a graft probe.
The city's executive vice-mayor, Xu Qin (pictured), a close ally of Guangdong party chief Wang Yang, was appointed mayor of the border city.
The appointment marked the end of a political storm whipped up by the corruption scandal. It is also the latest in a string of appointments that has been described as the largest political reshuffle in Guangdong in a decade.
Former Shenzhen party boss Liu Yupu was appointed chairman of the municipal people's congress yesterday. Speculation have been rife for months that Liu would be given a post in Guangdong's provincial political consultative conference. Liu was former Guangdong vice-party secretary and was transferred to Shenzhen in 2008.
Former vice-mayor Yan Xiaopei was appointed vice-chairwoman of the Shenzhen Municipal People's Congress, and vice-mayor Chen Yingchun will stay in the post. They were both reportedly implicated in Xu Zongheng's case.
The appointments are signs that Beijing would not dig further into the scandal and it is not going to punish more senior Shenzhen officials for the corruption that rocked the city's political arena a year ago.
Xu Zongheng was sacked on June 4 last year in a corruption probe. Two district party bosses and a people's political consultative conference district chairman were sacked.
The new mayor, Xu Qin, is a 49-year-old from Jiangsu . He told a press conference that his government would try to build an image of honesty and win people's confidence with incorruptibility.
He worked under Wang for four years when Wang was a vice-minister at the State Development and Planning Commission, the National Development and Reform Commission's predecessor.
Xu has been seen as the next Shenzhen mayor since 2008 when he was transferred from his position as director of a hi-tech department at the commission to become the city's executive vice-mayor.
He vowed to strengthen co- operation with Hong Kong, especially on the co-development of Qianhai in Shekou .
'The Qianhai area will focus on modern financial industry, logistics, technology, information technology and cultural industries,' he said, adding that a blueprint would be released soon as the cities recently signed an agreement.
The Qianhai area was expected to generate 150 billion yuan (HK$170.89 billion) of gross domestic product by 2020, or 10 billion yuan for every square kilometre, Xu said. He expected Shenzhen to record GDP of 1.5 trillion yuan by 2015, nearly double the roughly 800 billion yuan of last year.
Xu received his doctoral degree in business administration from Hong Kong Polytechnic University in 2004 and is said to be familiar with the city's economic development.
