Veteran of ‘iPhone City’ tapped as party boss of China’s Silicon Valley

2026.03.22 11:20 Jin Lei is no stranger to working in a tech-focused city, having previously held positions in Zhengzhou, home to a giant Foxconn facility. Photo: Handout China’s southern tech hub of Shenzhen has a new Communist Party chief, nearly six months after the city’s former party boss was promoted to provincial governor. State media announced on Sunday that Jin Lei, 56, had been appointed Shenzhen’s party chief as well as a member of the Guangdong provincial party committee and its standing committee. Jin, an economist and former official in the southwestern province of Sichuan, takes over from Meng Fanli, who had been in the position since April 2022. Meng was promoted to Guangdong’s governor in October and retained the Shenzhen position until the naming of his replacement. Jin was born in the central province of Henan in 1970 and obtained a bachelor’s degree from Wuhan University’s political science department in 1992. He was awarded a master’s degree in economics from Xiamen University in 2002, according to the Shenzhen-based Securities Times. Jin has held various posts in Henan over the past three decades, including deputy director of the provincial development and reform commission, mayor of Anyang and deputy party chief of provincial capital Zhengzhou – also known as “iPhone City”. In 2019, he was named the party secretary of Deyang in Sichuan before becoming a member of the provincial standing committee three years later. Jin’s appointment comes less than a fortnight after the “two sessions”, China’s largest annual legislative meetings, and the unveiling of the country’s 15th five-year plan, which will guide socioeconomic development through to 2030. With its focus on high technology, Shenzhen is a key element of those plans. Its economy grew by an annualised rate of 5.5 per cent from 2.83 trillion yuan (US$411 billion) in 2020 to 3.87 trillion yuan in 2025, surpassing Beijing and Shanghai as the nation’s largest manufacturing and export hub. The cit

原文链接: 南华早报