Background
Chunxian Zhang was born in 1953 in Yuzhou, Henan, China.
张春贤
Chunxian Zhang was born in 1953 in Yuzhou, Henan, China.
Chunxian Zhang joined the military at the age of 17. After four years in the army, he went back to his hometown to work on a farm.
Chunxian Zhang then went to school at the Northeastern Heavy Machinery Institute (now Yanshan University). After graduating, he obtained a state-assigned job at the No. 3 Machinery Ministry, working as an aerospace engineering technician.
In August 1995, Chunxian Zhang was sent to Yunnan province to become assistant to the governor, then vice-governor, overseeing science and technology. Two years later, he headed back to Beijing to serve as deputy minister, and later minister, of transport from 1998 to 2005.
In 2005, Chunxian Zhang became the Communist Party secretary of Hunan province. In 2006, he simultaneously took on the role of chairman of the Hunan Provincial People's Congress. Zhang replaced Wang Lequan as secretary of the Communist Party of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in April 2010 and was replaced by Zhou Qiang in his role as secretary of the Communist Party and chairman of the provincial People's Congress.
Chunxian Zhang has been a member of the 16th, 17th and 18th Central Committees. He was elected to the 18th Politburo of the Communist Party of China in 2012.