Background
Xia Baolong was born in Tianjin.
夏宝龙
Xia Baolong was born in Tianjin.
Prior to becoming Party Secretary, Xia was Governor of Zhejiang. He also formerly served as vice mayor of Tianjin. He has a doctoral degree in Economics.
In his youth, Xia was an elementary and high school teacher in Hebei and Tianjin, and a grassroots level official of the Communist Youth League.
He joined the Communist Party of China in November 1973. He went to complete a degree in Chinese at a Hexi District adult-education college (天津市河西区职工大学) in 1980.
Later he rose to the positions of Party Secretary and governor of Hexi District, and then Vice Mayor of Tianjin. Xia served under then-Zhejiang Party Secretary Xi Jinping.
In August 2011, he became the acting governor of Zhejiang, succeeding Lü Zushan, and was officially elected as Governor in January 2012.
On 18 December 2012, he was promoted to Communist Party Secretary of Zhejiang, the top political office of the province. In 2014, The New York Times and Chinese-language media reported that Xia allegedly issued orders to remove crosses from the Sanjiang Church in the Wenzhou area.
Between 1999 and 2003 he studied political economics at Peking University. In November 2003, Xia was transferred to Zhejiang to become a Deputy Party Secretary of the province.
Xia Baolong was an alternate member of the 15th, 16th, and 17th Central Committees, and is a member of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.
