Beijing announced today that Yang Chuantang has been moved back to the Tibet Autonomous Region to take over as Party Secretary from Guo Jinlong, after his brief stint in Qinghai as deputy Party chief. Guo Jinlong, who took over as TAR Party Secretary in late 2000 from Chen Kuiyuan, has been promoted to Party Secretary of Anhui, an inland province of south-eastern China.
Yang Chuantang shares a background in the Communist Youth League with China’s Party Secretary and President Hu Jintao, who is also a previous TAR Party Chief (1988 to 1992-3). His new appointment, following ten years of experience in Tibetan areas, is likely to reflect Hu’s personal interest in Tibet, and direct involvement in controlling Tibetan areas of the PRC.
The position of Party Secretary of the TAR, the most senior role in the region, has never been held by a Tibetan, which is resented by many Tibetan cadres in the Lhasa government. While there is a constitutional requirement for the chairman of an autonomous government to be a national of the region, there is no such legal obligation on the Party.
Fifty-nine year old Yang Chuantang, from Yucheng in Shandong province, became Vice-Chair of the TAR government in 1993 and was moved to the neighbouring province of Qinghai (which incorporates most of the north-eastern Tibetan region traditionally known as Amdo) as governor in October 2003. His appointment as TAR Party Secretary, which was rumoured to be taking place as early as last spring 2003, reflects a trend of appointing more highly educated and competent administrators as provincial leaders. It also reflects Beijing’s continuing focus on economic development in the region – Yang Chuantang’s previous career was in the petrochemical industry, and during his career in the TAR has emphasized the importance of fast-track economic development in order to tackle the “backwardness” of the farming and animal husbandry industry and the underdeveloped infrastructure and communications network.