What’s new: Shi Xiaolin, 55, has been elected governor of the southwest province of Sichuan, becoming China’s youngest female provincial chief.
The members of the Sichuan provincial legislature gathered and elected Shi on Wednesday, according to the state-run Xinhua News Agency.
Previously, she was the acting governor of the province after a three-year stint as the party chief of the province’s capital Chengdu from August 2021 to June this year. Shi has also been an alternate member of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, the party’s top decision-making body, since 2017.
Shi, a native of Zhejiang province, spent nearly three decades working in Shanghai after graduating from Shanghai University in 1990. She became a standing member and minister of the united front work department of the municipal party committee in 2017.
The background: Currently, there are two other female provincial chiefs. They are 62-year-old Liang Huiling, governor of the northeastern province of Heilongjiang, and 60-year-old Wang Lixia, chairwoman of the Inner Mongolia autonomous region.
Contact reporter Lu Zhenhua (zhenhualu@caixin.com) and editor Joshua Dummer (joshuadummer@caixin.com)
