Wang Yang – the ‘joker’ and reformer in Xi Jinping’s new pack
The former Guangdong party chief is known for being a committed economic reformer as well as his loyalty to the president
![Wang Yang, promoted to the party leadership, is known as a committed economic reformer. Illustration: Henry Wong](https://cdn.i-scmp.com/sites/default/files/styles/1020x680/public/images/methode/2017/10/26/d6d6851a-b7da-11e7-affb-32c8d8b6484e_1280x720_113105.jpg?itok=QL8gYS4_)
Wang Yang is one of the new members of the Communist Party’s Politburo Standing Committee. Here we present a snapshot of his career:
Wang Yang, who has just been named as one of China’s top leaders, is perhaps best known outside the country for the unlikely image of a senior Chinese politician cracking jokes at a Sino-US summit.
Wang broke the stereotype of the humourless and bland Chinese Communist Party technocrat by jesting that China and America’s relationship was like a marriage, but then quipping that this did not mean that he and the then US treasury secretary Jack Lew would be entering into a same-sex relationship.
“We cannot go for a divorce like Wendi Deng and Rupert Murdoch have done,” he joked. “It would be too big a price to pay.”
Inside China, Wang is best known as a committed economic reformer and analysts have suggested that this and his loyalty to President Xi Jinping are among the reasons he has been promoted to a seat among the nation’s top leaders – the seven members of the Politburo Standing Committee.
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