Chen Rugui was elected Shenzhen mayor by the city’s legislature yesterday.
Chen, the former Party chief of Zhongshan City, Guangdong Province, became vice mayor and acting mayor of Shenzhen on July 20, replacing Xu Qin who resigned from his government post as Shenzhen mayor.
Chen is also deputy Party chief of Shenzhen and a member of the standing committee of the city’s Party committee and the Guangdong Party committee.
Born in Lianjiang City in Guangdong Province in 1962, Chen was enrolled at the Guilin Metallurgy and Geology College, which was the predecessor to the Guilin University of Technology, to study geophysical prospecting. He worked as a teacher at the college for three years after graduating in 1983.
Chen obtained a master’s degree in applied geophysics at the Central South University in 1989 before being employed by the Guangzhou Institute of Building Science in 1991. He joined the Communist Party of China in October 1992.
He became vice chairman and vice general manager of the Guangzhou Municipal Construction Group in 1999, and was promoted to chairman in 2000.
He worked as deputy director of the Guangzhou Municipal Housing and Urban-rural Construction Commission between 2001 and 2003 before being promoted to director.
He was appointed secretary-general of the Guangzhou Municipal Government in 2007 and a member of the standing committee of the Guangzhou Party committee in 2010.
He became vice mayor of Guangzhou in 2011 and deputy Party chief of the provincial capital in 2015. In 2016, he was appointed Party chief of Zhongshan.
