Chen Quanguo

Chen Quanguo (Chinese: 陈全国; pinyin: Chén Quánguó; 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. 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.

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. In 2009, he became Governor of Hebei. 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.

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.