Wang Qishan

Early Life and the Sent-Down Youth Years

Wang Qishan was born on 19 July 1948 in Qingdao, Shandong, his ancestral home being Tianzhen, Shanxi. From 1969 to 1971 he was sent down as an educated youth to the Fengzhuang commune in Yan'an county, Shaanxi, where he met fellow sent-down youth Xi Jinping, beginning a long friendship. In 1973 he enrolled as a "worker-peasant-soldier student" in the history department of Northwest University, completing his studies while working, and subsequently conducted historical research at the Shaanxi Provincial Museum and the Institute of Modern History of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. He married a daughter of Yao Yilin, then a Vice Premier of the State Council — a marriage connection widely regarded as an important part of the network that later helped bring him into the core of the political establishment.

From 1986 to 1988, Wang Qishan served as Acting Director, then Director, of the Rural Development Research Institute of the State Council's Rural Development Research Centre. From 1994 to 1997 he held successive posts as President and Party Secretary of the People's Construction Bank of China and its successor, China Construction Bank. From 1997 to 2000 he was a Standing Committee member of the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee and Vice Governor of Guangdong; during the 1997–1998 Asian financial crisis, he oversaw resolution of Guangdong's financial sector risks, notably the collapse of Guangdong International Trust and Investment Corporation. From 2000 to 2002 he served as Director of the State Council's Office for Economic Restructuring. From 2002 to 2003 he served as Party Secretary of Hainan Province and Chairman of its Provincial People's Congress Standing Committee. He served as Mayor of Beijing from 2003 to 2007, directing the city's SARS response and preparations for the 2008 Olympic Games. From 2008 to 2013 he served as Executive Vice Premier with responsibility for finance and commerce, and co-chaired the US–China Strategic and Economic Dialogue.

At the 18th Party Congress in 2012, Wang was elected to the Politburo Standing Committee and appointed Secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, a position he held until 2017. In that role, he served as the principal operational architect of Xi Jinping's anti-corruption campaign, directing disciplinary investigations into more than one million officials at all levels of the Party and state apparatus, and driving institutional reforms that culminated in the establishment of the National Supervisory Commission in 2018. Following the 19th Party Congress in 2017, Wang stepped down from the Standing Committee. In March 2018 he was appointed Vice President of the People's Republic of China. On 10 March 2023, at the close of the First Session of the 14th National People's Congress, he stepped down as Vice President and was succeeded by Han Zheng.