Chen Quanguo

Chen Quanguo (born November 1955) is a Chinese retired politician who was the Chinese Communist Party Committee Secretary of Tibet Autonomous Region from 2011 to 2016 and of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region from 2016 to 2021, making him the only person to serve as the Party Secretary for both autonomous regions.

In December 1973, at the age of 18, Chen enlisted in the People's Liberation Army for four years.

He served with the First Army, Third Division Artillery Regiment.

He joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in February 1976.

After leaving the military in March 1977, he briefly worked at a car parts factory in Zhumadian.

Originally from Henan, Chen was among the first batch of students to graduate university after the resumption of Gaokao examinations in 1978.

Chen worked up the ranks in the party bureaucracy in his home province from a minor local official to the deputy provincial party chief.

After China resumed the National Higher Education Entrance Examination which was interrupted during the Cultural Revolution, in March 1978 Chen was admitted to the Economics Department of Zhengzhou University in the provincial capital Zhengzhou.

At Zhengzhou University he studied political economy.

Chen Quanguo graduated from Zhengzhou University in December 1981 and returned to work in his hometown of Pingyu, Henan.

Starting in 1983 he worked for the prefectural government of Zhumadian, and in 1988 became the Communist Party Secretary of Suiping, a county under the administration of Zhumadian.

In 1994, he was appointed the head of the Organization Department of the nearby prefecture-level city of Pingdingshan.

From 1995 to 1997 Chen enrolled as a part-time student at the School of Business Administration of Wuhan University of Technology, obtaining a master's degree in economics.

However, a Financial Times analysis has found that Chen plagiarized his thesis from other sources.

From 1996 to 1998 he served as the Mayor and Deputy Party Secretary of Luohe, another prefecture-level city in Henan.

Chen Quanguo was promoted to Vice-Governor of Henan Province in January 1998, and worked in the administration of then Henan Governor Li Keqiang.

Chen was regarded as a close confidante of Li.

In November 2000 Chen was appointed by the CCP head of the Standing committee of the Henan Provincial committee in the provincial Organization Department.

In April 2003 he became the Deputy Communist Party Secretary, President of the Party School of the CCP, and the President of the Henan Institute of Administration.

In 2009, he became Governor of Hebei.

In November 2009, Chen Quanguo was transferred to neighboring Hebei and promoted to Acting Governor and Deputy Party Secretary of the province.

He replaced Hu Chunhua, who became the Party Secretary of Inner Mongolia.

In January 2010 he was officially elected by the provincial congress as Governor of Hebei at the third session of the 11th National People's Congress.

In 2011 he became the Communist Party Secretary, the top official, of the Tibet Autonomous Region, developing the region economically and instituting greater policing surveillance.

On 25 August 2011, the CCP Central Committee announced the appointment of Chen to the remote Tibet Autonomous Region as Party Secretary, the top official of the region.

Shortly after Chen took up his position in August 2011, the region advertised positions for 2,500 additional police, and Chen implemented a new security policy for Tibet in the form of "convenience police stations".

This divided urban centers into grids, allowing the authorities to systematically observe all activities within the area.

On 8 May 2012, Chen Quanguo was elected the first secretary of the party committee of the Tibet Military Region.

In 2016, Chen was promoted to the party secretary of Xinjiang.

He has since then attracted press for overseeing Xinjiang internment camps targeting Turkic minorities in the region, and he is considered as one of the main architects of the persecution of Uyghurs in China.

In both Tibet and Xinjiang, he has earned a reputation for applying draconian measures to sinicize the traditional cultures.

In 2022, he was given a post in the Central Rural Work Leading Group of the CCP, and retired later that year after the 20th CCP National Congress, when he was not re-elected to the CCP Central Committee.

Chen Quanguo is a native of Pingyu County, Henan province.

By dint of when he was born he avoided most of the Cultural Revolution and only suffered a delayed education.

As of early 2016, at least 156 of the concrete one- and two-story stations - stocked with wheelchairs, first aid kits, repair tools, umbrellas and even phone chargers for public use - were built in Lhasa, with guards on 24 hour "seamless" surveillance patrols, while two stations are only 15 meters apart.

At least 544 more of these police stations exist throughout urban centers across Tibet.

Chen instituted a policy called the "double-linked household management system" to surveil 81,140 households in the Tibetan Autonomous Region, comprising more than three million people mobilized for security and social issues.

The system is described as a method where neighbors spy on each other, while Kelsang Dolma in Foreign Policy writes the policy is an "Orwellian social system" where family members are encouraged to report on each other to authorities.

There was a sharp rise in the number of self-immolations by Tibetan monks and nuns after Chen took office, which began and continued at Kirti Monastery.

Between 2017 and 2022, he was a member of the 19th Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party and was also Political Commissar of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps concurrently with his position as Xinjiang Party Secretary.