China appoints new Communist Party chief to oversee police

By Viola Zhou in South China Morning Post, Nov 1, 2017
China revealed its new national police Communist Party boss on Wednesday, amid reshuffles at the top of the country’s domestic security apparatus after President Xi Jinping started his second term in office.
Zhao Kezhi, 63 who has worked closely with two of Xi’s trusted aides, has became the party secretary at the Ministry of Public Security, according to a ministry statement.
Zhao’s predecessor Guo Shengkun – who remains public security minister – was announced as the party’s domestic security chief on Tuesday.
If precedence holds, Zhao is expected to take over the ministerial job in the coming months and become a State Councillor next March at the national legislature’s annual sessions in Beijing.
Zhao vowed at a meeting in his new role on Tuesday to eradicate the “pernicious influence” of former security tsar Zhou Yongkang, who was sentenced to life imprisonment on corruption charges in 2015.
Zhou was also a public security minister before his promotion to party secretary at the Central Politics and Law Commission.
Zhao has spent nearly two decades working in provincial government.
This included a spell in Guizhou, a poverty-stricken province that has nurtured many top politicians now serving in Xi’s administration.
Zhao worked in Guizhou under Li Zhanshu, a top aide of Xi who is now a member of the Politburo Standing Committee.
After Li was promoted in 2012, Zhao was made Guizhou party chief with Chen Miner, a protégé of Xi, serving as provincial governor.
Zhao was transferred two years ago to become party boss in Hebei province, a heavily polluted industrial heartland that surrounds Beijing.
http://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/2117894/china-appoints-new-communist-party-chief-oversee-police