A look at PRC's four new vice premiers

The new ministers, led by President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Keqiang, all have long careers in the Communist Party. Below are brief biographies of the most important ministers:

Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli (張高麗): “Do more, speak less” is the personal motto of Zhang, 66. Born into an “impoverished peasant's family,” according to an official biography, he graduated in economics, planning and statistics before working at a state petrochemical plant in the southern province of Guangdong from 1970 until the mid-1980s.

Zhang rose to Communist Party chief of Shenzhen, the vibrant “special economic zone” next to Hong Kong. He later led two of China's largest and most important provinces, Guangdong and Shandong, before moving to the provincial-level city of Tianjin. In Tianjin, he was credited with rebalancing the city's economy away from highly polluting, low-technology industries toward high-tech sectors including aerospace, computers and the first Airbus assembly plant outside Europe. As vice premier, he has primary responsibility for finance.

Vice Premier Liu Yandong (劉延東): Liu, 67, is one of two women on the party's elite 25-member Politburo. A party member for 48 years, she studied political science at university and led the party branch of a Beijing chemical plant for most of the 1970s.

She worked in the Communist Youth League, where many of China's top leaders cut their teeth, for a decade before she moved in 1991 to the party's United Front Work Department, where she stayed for most of the next 20 years. The United Front leads the party's external relations work, developing links with groups inside China and foreign political parties. Liu's new portfolio covers health, education and science.

Vice Premier Wang Yang (汪洋): Credited with leading pilot reforms in the affluent southern province of Guangdong in the past five years, Wang, 58, studied at the Central Party School and holds a master's degree in engineering.

A party member since 1975, his early career included stints as a supervisor in a food plant and a teacher at a school for party cadres before he became an official in his native Anhui province. He rose through several posts in Anhui in the 1980s and 1990s until he was transferred to a national planning post in 1999.

Vice Premier Ma Kai (馬凱): Ma, 66, was the minister of China's state planning commission from 2003. He is now the vice premier leading the government's economic work.

Trained in political economy, the Shanghai native was once a schoolteacher in Beijing and a tutor of party cadres. He rose through a series of posts in state planning, pricing and economic management in the 1980s and 1990s.

Public Security Minister Guo Shengkun (郭聲坤): A trained metallurgist and engineer, Guo, 58, has managed tungsten and silver mines. He headed the Aluminum Corporation of China from 2000 and 2004 before he was promoted to lead the southwestern region of Guangxi. Unlike previous public security chiefs, the 38-year party veteran has no direct experience in policing.

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