Lu Xinning, deputy director of Beijing’s liaison office in Hong Kong, has been appointed as a member of the Chinese Communist Party Standing Committee of Guangxi, an autonomous region in southwest mainland China.
Mainland media reported on Monday that Beijing had appointed Lu a member of the Communist Party Standing Committee for the Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.
Lu, 57, served as the liaison office’s second of the six deputy directors. She joined the office in May 2019, shortly before the outbreak of the anti-government protests.
In her five years in Hong Kong, she often attended and spoke at cultural and arts events.
In a speech delivered at a summit in 2022, she said Hong Kong should reform its economic structure to make the cultural industry a new engine for growth.
Before her role in Hong Kong, she was a deputy editor-in-chief of People’s Daily. She worked at the flagship newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party for 28 years after graduating from Peking University with a master’s degree in classical Chinese literature in 1991.
The appointment of Lu was made four months after Beijing said Qin Rupei, former vice-chairman of the Guangxi government, had fallen under a corruption investigation.
Lu was not the first mainland Chinese official in Hong Kong who was appointed to roles in Guangxi.
Peng Qinghua assumed office as the Communist Party secretary of Guangxi in 2012 after leading the liaison office from 2009 to 2012. Last year, he was appointed as a deputy chair of the national legislature, the National People’s Congress Standing Committee.
Guangxi is bordered by Vietnam in the southwest, an area considered to be a gateway to the Asean bloc, which comprises 10 countries.
China has been the Association of Southeast Asian Nations’ largest trading partner for 15 consecutive years, with trade volume between both reaching US$702 billion in 2023.
The bay area refers to the central government’s scheme to link Hong Kong, Macau and nine mainland cities and turn it into an economic powerhouse.
During that visit, Hong Kong signed 38 cooperation agreements with Guangxi, including governmental-level letters of intent and deals involving projects tied to the China-Asean Industrial Cooperation Zone in seven cities of Guangxi.
At the signing ceremony in Hong Kong, Liu had said the autonomous region was poised to better integrate into the bay area’s supply, capital, and industrial chains.
Hong Kong companies involved in the deals included Bank of China (Hong Kong), papermaking firm Lee & Man Paper and the Sunwah Group.
