Ningbo acting mayor is new Party chief

After six months of vacancy, the post of secretary of the Communist Party of China's Ningbo Committee has been filled.

Tang Yijun, who was the city's acting mayor for four months, will take the mantle as well as become a member of the Standing Committee of the CPC's Zhejiang Provincial Committee.

Tang, who was born in 1961, joined the Party in 1985.

He graduated from the Central Party School of the Communist Party of China.

In 2005, Tang became deputy secretary of the CPC's Ningbo City Committee and has been in charge of the city's economy and industry for the past 11 years.

Ningbo, one of the first coastal cities to open its economy in 1984, is a sub-provincial city with independent planning status, meaning it has more economic authority.

Ningbo's local gross domestic product is ranked second in the province, reaching 800 billion yuan ($120 billion) last year. That is just below Hangzhou, the provincial capital and the host city for the G20 Leaders Summit in September.

In addition, Ningbo's Zhoushan port has the world's largest cargo handling capacity, at 900 million metric tons. It handled about 21 million containers last year, ranking fourth in the world.

Tang wants Ningbo to become one of China's first-tier cities in the near future. Ningbo aims to become a world-class shipping and manufacturing powerhouse by 2020.

"Ningbo is at a critical juncture," he said at a municipal Party committee meeting in July.

"We have hundreds of items on the agenda, and deepening reform is the top priority," he added.

The city will focus on smart manufacturing, hardware, automation and services in order to transform Ningbo into a "model of smart economy," the new Party chief said.

With strength in automobile manufacturing, petrochemicals, home appliances and other industries, Ningbo became the first pilot city in China to implement the Made in China 2025 program, the high-end manufacturing reform drive, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.