BEIJING, Sept 13 (Reuters) - China has appointed former Communist Party secretary of Hubei province Li Hongzhong as the new party chief for the northeastern city of Tianjin, the official Xinhua news agency said on Tuesday.

The move comes days after China's ruling Communist Party said that Huang Xingguo, the mayor and acting Communist Party chief in Tianjin was being investigated on suspicion of corruption.

Huang was also removed from his post as mayor, Xinhua said in a brief article. </s> BEIJING (Reuters) - China’s ruling Communist Party appointed a new senior official on Sunday to run Tibet, considered one of the country’s most politically sensitive positions due to periodic anti-Chinese unrest in the devoutly Buddhist Himalayan region.

The official Xinhua news agency named Wu Yingjie as Tibet’s next party secretary. New leaders were also appointed in two other key provinces, part of a broad reshuffle ahead of an important party meeting next year.

Wu has worked almost his entire career in Tibet, according to his official resume, having previously served as a deputy governor and propaganda chief, among other roles.

Wu, like his predecessor Chen Quanguo, belongs to China’s majority Han Chinese ethnic group. Xinhua said Chen would be taking another position, without giving further details.

Communist troops marched in and took control of Tibet in 1950 in what Beijing calls a “peaceful liberation”. Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama fled to India in 1959 following a failed uprising against the Chinese.

China says its rule has bought prosperity and stability, rejecting claims from Tibetan exiles and rights groups of widespread repression.

Xinhua said new party bosses had also been appointed to serve in the strategically located southwestern province of Yunnan and the populous southern province of Hunan.

In Yunnan, which sits of the borders of Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam, Chen Hao replaced Li Jiheng, while in Hunan, Du Jiahao has assumed the party’s top job, Xinhua said.

Both Chen and Du worked with President Xi Jinping when he ran China’s commercial capital, Shanghai, as its Communist Party chief for a year in 2007, according to their resumes.

The party will hold a once-every-five-years congress next autumn where Xi is expected to further cement his hold on power by seeking to appoint close allies into the party’s ruling inner core, the politburo and the politburo standing committee.

The year leading up to that will see Xi appoint more new people into major provincial and government positions, sources with ties to the leadership say.

(Story refiles to fix typo in fourth paragraph, drops the word ‘rather’.) </s> SHANGHAI, July 15 (Reuters) - China has appointed Chen Miner, a rising political star, as the Communist Party boss in the southwestern city of Chongqing, the official Xinhua news agency said on Saturday.

Chen, along with a number of other swift-rising officials, is considered a prime contender to be promoted into the Standing Committee at China's five-yearly party congress this autumn.

Chen, a trusted confidant of President Xi Jinping, will take over the Chongqing role from Sun Zhengcai, Xinhua said. (Reporting by Adam Jourdan and Ben Blanchard; Editing by Clarence Fernandez) </s> BEIJING—China’s Communist Party placed under investigation a senior official once seen as a possible successor to President Xi Jinping, people familiar with the matter said, in a change that allowed the Chinese leader to promote an ally.

A hastily arranged meeting of party officials on Saturday in the inland city of Chongqing announced that Sun Zhengcai, the city’s top official, was being replaced and was being investigated, a person familiar with the matter said. A second person corroborated the investigation.

No further details of the investigation were given, the people said.

State media announced Sun’s removal Saturday but didn’t provide a reason or mention an investigation. Replacing Sun as Chongqing’s party secretary is Chen Min’er, who was party chief for the southern province of Guizhou, state media reported.

An expanded version of this report appears on WSJ.com .

Details Emerge in Suicide of GOP Activist Who Sought Hillary Clinton Emails </s> SHANGHAI: China has appointed Chen Miner, a rising political star, as the Communist Party boss in southwestern Chongqing, cementing his credentials as a contender to join the seven-member Politburo Standing Committee at the 19th party congress this autumn.

The elevation of Chen, a trusted confidant of President Xi Jinping, is a sign of Xi flexing his political muscle ahead of the leadership shuffle later this year.

Chen previously worked under Xi in Zhejiang province, where Xi was then provincial party leader, and has since then ridden on the coat-tails of his former boss, being elevated rapidly through the Party ranks.

In 2012, Chen was made Guizhou deputy party secretary. Less than a year later, and within roughly a month of Xi becoming president, he was promoted to governor, before moving up once more to his current role as Guizhou party boss in 2015.

Sources with ties to the leadership had said Chen could jump straight into the leading Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) with President Xi's support behind him, potentially easing out contenders from rival factions.

The PSC is ostensibly chosen by a vote, but results are typically preordained through an opaque process of horsetrading between the president, outgoing standing committee members, and party elders who remain influential.

Chen is currently only a member of the 205-member Central Committee, and an elevation to the PSC, which has ultimate power over the world's second-largest economy, would involve a two-step promotion, missing out the 25-member Politburo.

Chen will take over the Chongqing role from Sun Zhengcai, Xinhua said. Sun was seen as another potential candidate to be elevated to the PSC. </s> BEIJING, Sept 13 (Reuters) - China has appointed former Communist Party secretary of Hubei province Li Hongzhong as the new party chief for the strategic port city of Tianjin, days after announcing a corruption investigation into the northeastern city's former mayor.

Dozens of senior officials have been investigated or jailed since President Xi Jinping assumed power almost four years ago, vowing to go after corruption and warning, like others before, the problem threatens the party's grip on power.

The party's graft-busting Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said on Saturday that the mayor and acting party chief of Tianjin, 61-year-old Huang Xingguo, was suspected of "serious discipline breaches", a euphemism for corruption.

"Huang Xingguo will no longer act as Tianjin party secretary, has been excused from his positions as municipal deputy party secretary, standing committee member, and mayor, and will be handled according to relevant laws and regulations," Xinhua said. It gave no other details.

Li, 60, has been appointed as Tianjin's party secretary, a post that outranks the mayor, and would no longer hold his positions in Hubei, the official Xinhua news agency said in a short article.

Tianjin is an important port city about an hour from Beijing by car that has ambitions to become a financial hub for northern China. It is one of four conurbations - along with Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing - termed a municipality, giving it the same high status as a province.

In August last year, a series of massive explosions at a chemicals warehouse in Tianjin killed about 170 people, sparking anger nationwide that it had been built so close to residential areas.

Last month, the party announced it was investigating Yin Hailin, a long-time city planning official who became Tianjin's deputy mayor in 2012, also on suspicion of corruption.

Huang's fall from grace appears to have come out of the blue. On Saturday, the official Tianjin Daily covered his visit to a middle school on its front page and praised teachers for their work.

Critics have accused Xi of using the corruption campaign as a cover to root out political rivals, though he has denied this.

Last year, a Chinese court jailed former domestic security chief Zhou Yongkang for life for bribery, leaking state secrets and abuse of power.

He was the most senior Chinese official to be ensnared in a graft probe since the party swept to power in 1949. </s> The Chinese authorities are finally out with the date for the twice-a-decade China’s Communist Party Congress that begins October 18th.

The Diplomat notes 5 things to watch out for at the Chinese Communist Party Congress:

1. Xi Jinping ... it is virtually certain that Xi will be returned as General Secretary for another five years.

2. Who serves on the Standing Committee also matters

3. Another telling development will be the ability of former presidents to anoint future presidents

4. The still significant challenges for China ahead </s> The former Communist Party boss of the Chinese city of Chongqing, Sun Zhengcai, is under investigation for suspected serious violations of discipline, the official Xinhua news agency said on Monday.

BEIJING: The former Communist Party boss of the Chinese city of Chongqing, Sun Zhengcai, is under investigation for suspected serious violations of discipline, the official Xinhua news agency said on Monday.

Sun had been party chief of the southwestern megalopolis until an abrupt announcement earlier in July that he no longer had the position and had been replaced by a rising political star close to President Xi Jinping. </s> BEIJING — The Chinese Communist Party said on Monday that Sun Zhengcai, a high-flying politician who had been seen as a potential future premier, was under investigation over suspected “grave violations of discipline,” ending his career and raising the stakes of a national leadership shake-up that is just months away.

Mr. Sun, 53, is the most senior serving politician purged so far in a five-year drive against corruption, disloyalty and abuse of power that President Xi Jinping began soon after taking control of the Communist Party in late 2012. The terse party announcement about the investigation issued through Xinhua, the state news agency, did not specify the allegations against Mr. Sun. “Violations of discipline” is a vague term that can include corruption, abuses of power and disloyalty to the party.

But by removing Mr. Sun, Mr. Xi has eliminated a potential obstacle to his efforts to consolidate power later this year, when a Communist Party congress will appoint a new leadership team to serve under him for his second five-year stint as party leader and as president.

Mr. Sun had been party secretary of Chongqing, a riverside city in southwestern China, since late 2012, when he was sent there to help clean up a previous political scandal. His abrupt dismissal was announced on July 15, initially without explanation. Since then, he has not appeared in public, and his name had not appeared in state media until the official confirmation on Monday that he was under investigation.
Du Jiahao becomes Communist Party Secretary of Hunan, replacing Xu Shousheng.