BBC NEWS | Leadership changes (original) (raw)

As chairman of the Communist Party's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, Wei Jianxing was responsible for leading corruption investigations within the party.

Born in 1931 in southeastern Zhejiang Province, Mr Wei joined the Communist Party in 1949 as a student. After graduating from Dalian Engineering Institute, he studied business management in the Soviet Union.

He returned to China in 1955 and began a 25-year stint as a Party official in a factory in Harbin, the capital of north-east China's Heilongjiang province.

The management and administration skills he honed there were put to use when he was appointed mayor of Harbin in 1981.

By 1987 Mr Wei was the anti-corruption minister, a position that saw him participate in talks with students involved in the Tiananmen protests. He oversaw corruption charges levelled by students against party officials.

In the decade that Mr Wei held this post, he was responsible for handling numerous cases, including the high-profile 1995 corruption scandal surrounding former Beijing party boss and Politburo member Chen Xitong.

In 1997, Mr Wei was promoted to the Politburo standing committee, a post that he is widely expected to resign at the party congress.

Mr Wei has also served as China's top union chief since 1993.