Zhou Yongkang

Zhou Yongkang is a senior leader of the Communist Party of China who is currently serving as the 9th ranked member of the powerful Politburo Standing Committee, State Councilor, and the head of the , an organ directing central government legal policy and the legislative agenda. He is a and member of the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. He was mayor of Panjin in Liaoning Province from 1983 until 1985, was served prominently as the of the People's Republic of China and thus chief of the from 2002 to 2007.

Biography

Born in December 1942, Zhou Yongkang is a native of Wuxi, Jiangsu Province. In November 1964 he joined the and entered the workforce in September 1966. He graduated from the Survey and Exploration Department of Beijing Petroleum Institute majoring in geophysical survey and exploration. As a university graduate he holds the title Senior Engineer with a rank equivalent to that of Professor.

During the 1960s and 70s he spent most of his career in the oil sector and by the mid-1980s he was vice minister of the Petroleum Industry and from 1996 General Manager of China National Petroleum Corporation. In 1998 he was Minister of Land and Resources and in 1999, secretary of the Communist Party of China Sichuan Provincial Committee, where he was a hardliner on Tibetan independence supporters. During his tenure as Minister of Public Security, he was a hardliner and reformer of China's policing system, aiming to create a more professional policing body, even going as far as to fire several hundred police officers for a drinking problem. His heavy hand in Sichuan and as Public Security Minister made him noticed by the party's central althority, and in 2007 he was transferred to fill Luo Gan's retirement vacancy in the Party's powerful Political and Legislative affairs committee, having ultimate authority with state security forces. As a result, even though he is ranked last in the PSC's hierarchy, it is not an indication of his actual power.