THEO VAN GOGH WATCH : THE STRONG MAN AFTER XI !  –  MEMRI Inquiry and Analysis Series No. 1660

Xi Jinping’s Politburo – Part 4: Wang Yang

By: Chris King

This is the fourth installment in a series of reports about the individuals comprising the Standing Committee of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) 19th Central Committee, which was elected in 2017 at the 19th National People’s Congress. These men, the most powerful people in China, are Chinese President Xi Jinping’s closest advisors.

This installment in the series is about Wang Yang (汪洋). Wang, currently Chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, is considered the fifth most powerful individual in China. A skilled politician, he has served Xi Jinping faithfully, even though he has the credentials of a reformist. He is almost universally well-liked among China’s political elite.

Biography

Wang Yang, born March 5, 1955, is from Suzhou, in China’s Anhui Province. In his late teens, he was secretary of the Communist Youth League branch of a food factory where he worked, and when he was 20 he married Zhu Mali, the daughter of a senior official in Suxian Prefecture of Anhui Province.

Following the Cultural Revolution in 1976, Wang taught at the May 7th Cadre School of Suxian Prefecture, later serving as Deputy Director of the Teaching and Research Office and as a member of the school’s party committee. In March 1979, he was selected to study political economics at the Theoretical Propaganda Cadre Class of the Central School of the CCP, after which he returned to teaching.

Rising through the ranks of the Communist Youth League, in 1983 he became the Deputy Secretary of the Communist Youth League in the Anhui Province. After leaving the League, Wang served as the Deputy Director of the Anhui Sports Committee, becoming the committee’s director in 1987.

In 1988, during the period of Deng Xiaoping’s reforms, he became mayor of the city of Tongling, in Anhui province. During his tenure, he drew the attention and won the favor of Deng Xiaoping when, after the Tiananmen Square events in 1989 that resulted in the freezing of Deng’s reform agenda, he published an article in Tongling Daily calling for continued economic reforms and ideological openness in a fashion consistent with Deng’s agenda. In 1992, during a tour in the region, Deng specially summoned Wang and praised him for urging reforms to such an extent, dubbing him the “baby mayor” because of his youth.

In 1993, at the age of 38, Wang Yang was appointed Vice-Governor of the Anhui Provincial People’s Government, becoming the youngest vice-governor in China at the time. At the same time, he began serving as a member of the Party’s Standing Committee of the Anhui Provincial Committee. In 1999, he was transferred to China’s State Council and served as the Deputy Director of the State Development Planning Commission.

A decade later, in March 2003, after Wen Jiabao became Premier of the State Council, Wang was appointed Deputy Secretary-General of the State Council in Wen Jiabao’s cabinet, responsible for the daily work of the General Office of the State Council. On December 24, 2005, he succeeded Huang Zhendong as Secretary of the Chongqing Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China, and served until November 30, 2007.

At the 17th National People’s Congress, on October 22, 2007, Wang, now 52, was elected as a member of the CCP Central Committee’s Politburo, joining the ranks of China’s senior-most political elite. He was re-elected in 2012 at the 18th National People’s Congress, and in March 2013 was nominated by Vice Premier Li Keqiang to be Vice Premier of the State Council, in charge of agriculture, water resources, flood control and drought relief, poverty alleviation and development, business, and tourism. His term as Vice Premier ended in 2018.

Subsequently, in 2017, at the 19th National People’s Congress, he was elected to be a member of the Politburo’s Standing Committee, becoming one of the seven most powerful individuals in China.

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