Wang’s performance at the hearing of the Bo case has been widely praised by legal observers and he was considered to have maintained a balanced approach to the defendant and public prosecutors.

It was also the first time a local court used Weibo to provide public coverage of the hearing.

The move allowed the authorities to claim the highly sensitive case had been handled transparently.

Bo, the former Communist Party secretary in Chongqing, was sentenced to life imprisonment last year for bribery, theft of public money and abuse of power. Bo appealed against the sentence but was unsuccessful.

The sentence, though imposed by Wang, was widely believed to be a decision by the country’s top decision-making body, the standing committee of the politburo, given the high-profile position of Bo as a former member of the 25-seat politburo.

Wang was born in Shandong province in 1965. He started to work with the Jinan Intermediate People’s Court in 1985 when he graduated from Shandong University. He later received a Master’s degree and then a Doctorate and was promoted to deputy head of the court after 2000.

The second filing court with the Supreme People’s Court, established in 2009, is in charge of hearings in cases of jurisdictional disputes, the review of complaints of sentences by local courts and drafting of judicial interpretations.