DHARAMSHALA: China appointed Mr Wu Yingjie as its new party secretary for their so-called Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) on 28 August, according to Xinhua, China’s official news agency.

The appointment came after a reshuffle of senior posts in key regions such as Tibet, Xinjiang and Yunnan after its annual closed-door meeting held in the seaside resort town of Beidaihe, 250 km away from Beijing.

Mr Wu Yingjie’s predecessor, the current party secretary of Tibet, Mr Chen Quanguo is transferred to Xinjiang or East Turkestan, a region dominated by Uighur Muslims in China’s northwest.

Mr Wu Yingjie (59) has been deputy party chief in TAR since 2011, and has been based there since 1974. He worked on farms and at a power plant there before doing his university degree in Tibet’s capital Lhasa.

His appointment comes ahead of a key party congress next year, which takes place once every five years and will mark the end of Chinese president Xi Jinping’s first five years in office.