Jia Qinglin

Chairman, Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC): An emissary from the ‘Shanghai clique’

Date of Birth: March 1940
Place of Birth: Hebei Province

Jia Qinglin, the number four in China’s leadership, has just completed his second tour of African nations. At each stop, Jia sought to build ties with presidents and legislative leaders: Paul Biya and National Assembly President Cavayé Djibril in Cameroon, Hifikepunye Pohamba and National Council Chair Asser Kapere in Namibia, and Jacob Zuma and National Council of Provinces Chair Mninwa Mahlangu in South Africa.

Jia was born in Hebei in 1940. Like his colleagues on the Standing Committee, China’s core leadership, Jia is an engineer-turned-bureaucrat. He joined the Communist Party while a student at Hebei Engineering College in 1959. Over the next two decades, he climbed party ranks in the First Machine-Building Industry Ministry of Jiangxi Province. In 1978, he became General Manager of the newly-established China National Machinery and Equipment Import and Export Corporation. In 1983, he took over as Director of Taiyuan Heavy Machinery, and two years later left industry for politics as Deputy Chairman of Fujian Province.

While Jia was Party Chairman of Fujian in the 1990s, his wife was linked to the massive smuggling operations of Lai Changxing and his Yuanhua Group, which operated out of the Xiamen port. An old friend of President Jiang Zemin, Jia emerged unscathed and was made Beijing Party Chairman in 1996. As a departing move in 2002, Jiang stuffed the Politburo Standing Committee with members of his faction. It is as a member of Jiang’s ‘Shanghai clique’ that Jia wields the most influence. His post as Chairman of the CPPCC carries little formal authority. The CPPCC is an advisory body to the National People’s Congress; CPPCC members are former provincial leaders near the end of their careers, with nowhere else to rise.