New acting mayor picked for Shanghai

Shanghai's legislative body on Monday appointed Gong Zheng as vice-mayor and acting mayor of the municipality. The appointment was made at the 19th session of the Standing Committee of the 15th Shanghai Municipal People's Congress, the local legislature, and was posted on its website.

The meeting also accepted the resignation of incumbent mayor Ying Yong, who had been appointed Party secretary of Hubei province in mid February.

Earlier on Thursday, Gong, 60, was appointed deputy secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China. He also was appointed as a member of the Standing Committee of the CPC Shanghai Committee. The appointment was approved by the CPC Central Committee.

Gong was born in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, in 1960, and joined the Communist Party of China in 1985.

He graduated from the customs management department of the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing in 1982 and acquired an MBA from the same university in 1994.

Gong has over 25 years of work experience in the country's customs system. He started his career as a civil servant in the General Administration of Customs in 1982 and later became deputy director of the administration in 2003.

Gong obtained his doctoral degree in economics from Xiamen University as an on-job postgraduate from 2001 in 2004.

In 2008, Gong left customs and became vice-governor in Zhejiang province and later Party chief of Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang.

After working seven years in Zhejiang, he was transferred to Shandong province to be the deputy provincial Party chief in 2015. In 2017, he was elected governor of Shandong.

He is a member of the 19th CPC Central Committee.

In a reshuffle of the leadership of Hubei province, which had been hit hardest by the outbreak of the novel coronavirus, Ying was appointed by the CPC Central Committee to replace Jiang Chaoliang as Hubei provincial Party chief.

The newly appointed Party chief is serving as chief commander of the province's prevention and control work against the novel coronavirus.