Li Hongzhong

Li Hongzhong (Chinese: 李鸿忠; born 13 August 1956) is a Chinese politician, who is currently the first-ranking vice chairperson of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress and a member of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party.

Born in Shenyang, Li spent much of his early career in Guangdong province, including as mayor, then party secretary of Shenzhen. He was transferred to Hubei province in 2007 and would go on to serve as Governor and party secretary there. He served as the Party Secretary of Tianjin between 2016 and 2022.

Li was born in Shenyang, Liaoning in August 1956, but traces his ancestry to Changle, Shandong. Between 1975 and 1978, during the Cultural Revolution, he performed manual labour as a sent-down youth in an agricultural near Shenyang. In 1976, he joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). In 1978, he earned admission to the history department at Jilin University, where he graduated from with a bachelor’s degree in 1982.

After he graduated, Li was sent to work at the government. In 1982, he started working as a mishu for Li Tieying, who first served as the Party Secretary of Shenyang and later as the Party Secretary of Liaoning. After Li Tieying moved to Beijing to become the Minister of the Electronics Industry in 1985, Li Hongzhong became a secretary in the Ministry. In 1988 he was sent to Guangdong province, where he would go on to spend two decades of his political career. He first served as the vice mayor of Huizhou until 1995, the deputy party secretary and mayor from 1995 to 2000, and the party secretary from 2000 to 2001. He became the vice governor of Guangdong in 2001, In April 2001, as vice governor, he warned city and municipal education bureaus would be held responsible for cheating during public exams. He later became the executive vice governor in 2003.

In 2002, after the 16th Party Congress, Li became an alternate of the CCP Central Committee. He became the acting mayor and mayor of Shenzhen, China's most prominent Special Economic Zone, in 2004. In March 2005, he was named Party secretary of Shenzhen. In May 2007, in an interview with Southern Metropolis News, Li rejected calls to end Shenzen's special economic zone after the National People's Congress decided to standardize the corporate income tax rate throughout China, which some said diminished the SEZs purpose.

In November 2007, he was transferred to Hubei province, where he took on the office of deputy party secretary and governor. In December 2010, he became the party secretary of Hubei. During his Hubei governorship, the Shishou incident and Deng Yujiao incident occurred in the province.

In a 2014 article at the People's Daily, Li wrote about his understanding of Xi's book Zhijiang Xinyu, calling it a "glorious chapter" of Marxism. In preparation for the Third Plenum of the 18th Central Committee, Li Hongzhong was only one of two regional officials (the other was Huang Qifan) selected to be part of the drafting committee on the "resolution for deepening reform." On June 1, 2015, the Dongfang Zhixing ferry sank, causing the deaths of some 442 people. Only 12 people were rescued, but the Hubei government granted accolades to some 99 organizations and 253 individuals. Li's tenure also saw the prosecution of close allies of former security chief Zhou Yongkang.

On January 15, 2016, at a meeting of the provincial party standing committee, Li endorsed the "Xi Jinping leadership core" principle, stating, "the Politburo and its Standing Committee are the core leaders [hexin] of the party, General Secretary Xi Jinping is the core leader of the party center. To proactively maintain the authority of the party center means maintaining the leading core of General Secretary Xi Jinping."