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Profile of Jia Qinglin - CPPCC chairman
(Xinhua) Updated: 2008-03-13 22:03 Attention to Grassroots Voices A native of north China's Hebei Province, Jia was born in March 1940. After graduating from the Hebei Engineering College in 1962, he came to Beijing and worked in the former First Ministry of Machine-Building Industry as a technician. He was appointed general manager of China National Machinery and Equipment Import and Export Corporation in 1978, and became head of the Taiyuan Heavy Machinery Plant in north China's Shanxi Province in 1983. In 1985, Jia was dispatched to work in Fujian and stayed there for 11 years, serving successively as deputy secretary of the CPC Fujian Provincial Committee, the provincial governor, and Party chief of Fujian. In October 1996, Jia returned to Beijing and served successively as acting mayor, mayor and Party chief of the capital city. Jia was the one who put forth a high-tech-based "capital economy" concept and development strategy, which he believed would help bring into full play Beijing's unique advantages in education, science and technology, and human resources. As head of the leading group for Beijing's 2008 Olympic bid, Jia played a key role in bringing the Games to the Chinese capital. After designing and carrying out a successful bidding strategy along with his colleagues, Jia also initiated the idea of "New Beijing, New Olympics", which many believe would guide Beijing's development in a new stage.In November 2002, Jia Qinglin became member of the Standing Committee of the CPC Central Committee Political Bureau. In October 2007, he was reelected to the top leadership of the CPC. In a display of his down-to-earth style of work, Jia visited grassroots units and local households as many as 267 times in his six-year tenure in Beijing municipal government, mostly on the weekends, to learn the actual situation in the city. With a deep affection toward the common people, he frequently went to the homes of local needy residents, many of whom lived in worn-out and unsafe houses, listening to their problems and conveying the concerns of the Party and the government. After he was transferred to work in the Central Committee of the CPC, he continued to visit grassroots areas. In Tibet, he cared about the income of herdsmen in rural areas. In Hainan Province, he worried about the drinking problem of villages from local ethnic minorities. In Chongqing municipality, he paid attention to the living situation of residents resettled from the Three Gorges Project. Early this year, he went to the snowstorm-stricken Anhui Province to comfort people there and cleared snow-covered road with citizens of the capital city Hefei amid low temperature. "Although he is in high position, he is easy of approach. He is very amicable to ordinary people and shares common topics with them," say people working with him. He chats with farmers in folk language. He asks for the difficulty in the daily life of religious groups. He expresses his compliment to a Tibetan singer by simply saying "I like your songs very much." In Hong Kong, when he received a portrait drawn by a local child, he couldn't help holding the portrait high and taking pictures with the child happily. That is Jia, who always thinks he is not different from people working around him. He takes active part in the New-Year celebration ceremony with his colleagues and invites journalists and other staff to join him for important activities during his visits and expresses his sincere gratitude to their work. "He has good memory and can remember our names immediately. He always greets us sincerely whenever we meet him," said a journalist. Jia and his wife Lin Youfang, a classmate of his in the college years, have a son and a daughter. His wife retired to take care of him as soon as Jia came to work in Beijing in 1996. He likes to play tennis and bridge after work. |
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