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Conservative cadre set for Guangdong post
By Willy Wo-Lap Lam
HONG KONG, China (CNN) -- A relatively conservative cadre is slated to become the top official of China's southern, go-go Guangdong Province. Party sources in Beijing said the Communist Party Secretary of coastal Zhejiang Province, Zhang Dejiang, would soon be transferred to Guangdong as party boss. Zhang, who is believed to be close to the so-called Shanghai Faction, particularly Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) member Zeng Qinghong, was inducted into the Politburo at the just-ended 16th Party Congress. The incumbent party boss of Guangdong, Li Changchun, who was promoted a PSC member last week, is expected to be made a vice-premier in the spring. The party boss of Guangdong, the No. 1 exporter and foreign-exchange earner among the country's 31 provinces and directly administered cities, usually has Politburo status. The party sources said, however, that Zhang, 56, a native of northeastern Liaoning Province, did not have a reformist reputation. According to official biographies, Zhang studied economics at Kim Il-Sung University in Pyongyang in the late 1970s. After a stint as a college administrator, the fluent Korean speaker specialized in party affairs, rising to be party boss of Jilin Province in 1995. No reformist reputationHowever, while Zhejiang has been at the forefront of market reforms, Zhang, who became party boss of the province in 1998, has no track record in economic liberalization. In early 2001, Zhang wrote an article in a conservative theoretical journal raising doubts about the political and moral rectitude of private businessmen. However, the veteran party functionary shifted gears after President Jiang Zemin pronounced in July the same year that the Communist party was ready to recruit non-state entrepreneurs as members. An economic cadre in Guangdong said local officials were resigned to Beijing appointing relatively conservative northerners to be party secretary of the province. Since arriving in Guangzhou in early 1998, the incumbent party boss Li has focused mostly on ideological and political campaigns such as studying Jiang's teachings. This is despite the fact that Li had the reputation of a reformer when he was mayor of the northeastern city of Shenyang in the mid-1980s. Beijing is also set to appoint a new Guangdong Governor upon the imminent retirement of incumbent Lu Ruihua. Huang Huahua, a provincial vice-party secretary known for his reformist views, is tipped to succeed Lu early next year.
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