Last week Sun Zhengcai, 49, was named as
the secretary general of Chongiqong Province, the same position that Bo
Xilai held before being purged from the CCP.
Sun is part of a small group of young rising stars in the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) that many believe are being prepared as China's
6th generation leaders who are expected to take power from Xi Jinping
and Li Keqiang in 2022. Sun became one of the fifteen new Politburo
members at the 18th Party Congress.
Sun obtained a doctorate in agriculture from Beijing Agriculture
University in 1987 and spent a year in the British countryside as a
visiting fellow at Britain’s Rothamsted Experimental Station.
After working in lower level positions for a number of years, Sun was
assigned to the Shunyi District in Beijing and later went on to serve
as deputy secretary and secretary general of the Beijing municipal
committee of the CCP.
Then, in December 2006 when Sun was just 43 years old, he was chosen
to serve as the Minister of Agriculture, making him the youngest person
holding a ministerial level position at the time. Notably, Sun’s time
as agriculture minister overlapped with Bo Xilai’s own time as minister
of commerce. Indeed, in May 2007 Bo and Sun sent a jointly written letter
to the World Trade Organization that advocated giving developing
countries greater leeway on agricultural tariffs while forcing developed
nations to decrease their own. Sun also addressed the UN’s Conference on World Food Security the following year.
Domestically, Sun’s time as agriculture minister was characterized by
the promotion of the “three rural issues” (promoting agricultural and
rural economic development, and increasing farmer income) which had
become a trademark of the Hu-Wen administration. According to Sun
himself, farmers continued to see a more than 6% increase in their per
capita annual income growth during his time in office. At the same time,
he publically acknowledged that the rural-urban income gap was continuing to widen.
After three years as agriculture minister, Sun was made general
secretary of Jilin Province in 2009, a Northwestern province of 27
million people that borders on North Korea. Sun was the youngest
provincial chief at the time. He has served in this position until his
most recent appointment and was made a member of the CPC Central
Committee at the 17th Party Congress in 2007 and a deputy to the
National People’s Congress (NPC) in June 2010.
Under his stewardship Jilin Province has continued its steady growth rate of the previous decade plus, with some estimating
a 13% annual growth rate during Sun’s time there. Last year Jilin’s
provincial GDP topped $1 trillion yuan for the first time, ultimately
reaching $1.05 trillion yuan (US$168.5 billion) by year’s end. According to figures
released by the Chinese government, residents of Jilin saw their
disposable income rise 15.5% in 2011 with those in rural areas seeing a
20% increase.
While Jilin’s economy continues to be heavily weighted towards
agriculture, particularly grains, it has also developed a sizeable
chemical industry over the last decade.
In Jilin Province Sun appears to have developed close ties with North
Korean officials, both visiting that country and hosting North Korean
officials during their trips to China. Among the DPRK officials he
hosted was Kim Jong-Il, who visited Jilin in August 2010, May 2011, and
August 2011. Sun often greeted Kim on his arrival at the train station
and held receptions in his honor.
More recently, Sun hosted Kim Jong Un’s powerful uncle, Jang Song
Taek, while the latter was in China this past August in an effort to
repair strained relations between Pyongyang and Beijing. Jang was in
Jilin for two days during this trip and later Sun was present when Jang
met with both President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao in Beijing.
Sun has also traveled to North Korea on a number of occasions
including June 2010 when Sun was part of a CCP delegation that held a
“strategic forum” with a Korean Workers’ Party delegation led by Choe
Thae Bok [Choe t'ae-bok], the Chairman of the Supreme People’s Assembly
and Secretary of the Korean Workers’ Party [KWP], who Sun has hosted in
Jilin. Sun returned to Pyongyang in October of that year as part of a
delegation Hu Jintao had sent to personally deliver a note from him to
Kim Jong-Il congratulating him on the 65th anniversary of the founding
of the Korean Workers’ Party.
More recently Sun has begun establishing links to South Korea, with South Korean companies agreeing in June
to pursue joint investments in Jilin Province worth $3.9 billion. 48
South Korean businesses were involved in the deal, which is expected to
focus on projects in a number of industries including agriculture,
construction, energy, distribution, and tourism. Last year Jilian also signed 9 economic agreements worth U.S. $9.5 billion with Indonesia.
Zachary Keck is assistant editor of The Diplomat. He can be found on Twitter: @ZacharyKeck.
Image credit:
Government of China
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