CCP Names New Party Leader of Xinjiang

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Jul 2, 2025 - 09:57 Updated: Jul 2, 2025 - 09:51
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CCP Names New Party Leader of Xinjiang
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The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has appointed a new top official for the far-western Xinjiang region, placing a senior cadre with experience in propaganda and ideological control in the sensitive post.

In a brief, one-paragraph statement released July 1, state-run Xinhua News Agency said the CCP Central Committee had “recently decided” to appoint Chen Xiaojiang as the new party secretary of Xinjiang.

The appointment puts Chen in de facto control of the region’s affairs. The CCP maintains a parallel system of authority that supersedes the official government bureaucracy. Party committees are embedded in nearly all government agencies, state-owned enterprises, and public institutions, directing and supervising day-to-day operations.

Chen, 63, is one of the roughly 370 members of the CCP Central Committee. His new post will likely help him move up within the Party’s ranks, as the Xinjiang party chief has traditionally held a seat on the 24-member Politburo, the epicenter of the CCP’s power.

From Water Bureaucrat to Ethnic Policy Enforcer

Born in the eastern province of Zhejiang, Chen spent much of his early career in China’s water resources and energy sectors, including as vice party secretary at the Ministry of Water Resources. His political trajectory shifted in 2015, when he was appointed deputy propaganda chief at the CCP’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), the Party’s internal watchdog spearheading Secretary General Xi Jinping’s sweeping anti-corruption drive.
Following a major election fraud scandal in the northeastern Liaoning province in 2016, Chen was dispatched there to head the provincial discipline inspection commission. He returned to Beijing after a year to serve as deputy party secretary of the CCDI.

In 2020, Chen was appointed executive deputy minister of the CCP’s United Front Work Department, the powerful agency tasked with promoting loyalty to the party across sectors such as private industry, religious groups, academia, and the global Chinese diaspora.

Later that year, Chen became the first Han Chinese—who make up the overwhelming majority of China’s population—to lead the National Ethnic Affairs Commission, a position held by those of ethnic minority backgrounds for more than 60 years. That appointment underscored a shift in Beijing’s approach to ethnic governance and was seen as part of Xi’s push for accelerated ideological indoctrination and cultural assimilation of non-Han minorities.

As the commission’s director, Chen replaced Bagatur, who is of Mongol descent, just months after protests erupted in Inner Mongolia, which is a part of the historical Mongol homeland but now hosts a predominantly Han population. The unrest followed Beijing’s directive to retire Mongolian-language instructions in schools in favor of Mandarin, an order critics described as “cultural genocide.”

CCP’s Xinjiang Czar

The policies implemented in Inner Mongolia echoed those in Xinjiang, which in recent years has faced mounting international scrutiny over human rights abuses, particularly the mass detention of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in so-called reeducation camps.

Former detainees and human rights groups have documented allegations of forced labor, forced sterilization, political indoctrination, and restrictions on cultural expression, including being compelled to learn Mandarin while being forbidden from speaking their native Turkic languages.

The U.S. government has recognized the CCP’s actions in Xinjiang as genocide.

Chen replaces Ma Xingrui, whom Beijing said will be reassigned but has not specified his next post. Before his appointment to Xinjiang in 2021, Ma served as general manager of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, party secretary of Shenzhen, and governor of the southern Guangdong province.

Ma had taken over the Xinjiang post from Chen Quanguo, the architect of the massive detention and surveillance systems aimed at tightening CCP control of the region. Chen Quanguo was sanctioned by the Trump administration in 2020 for his role in human rights abuses in both Xinjiang and Tibet.
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