On September 4, 2026, the 16th Shanghai Municipal People’s Congress Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) decided to “accept the request for Gong Zheng to resign from the position of Mayor of Shanghai,” and Zhu Zhongming was appointed as the Vice Mayor and Acting Mayor of Shanghai. Zhu Zhongming took over as the Party Secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Government on August 29, 2026, replacing Gong Zheng.
Zhu Zhongming is not a member of the Central Committee of the CCP, nor is he a candidate member of the Central Committee. This unconventional promotion has led to speculation that the list of Central Committee members for the 21st National Congress of the CCP has been predetermined.
Born in April 1972, Zhu Zhongming is one of the youngest high-ranking officials born after the 1970s in the CCP. Currently, the youngest high-ranking official born after the 1970s in the CCP is Lu Dongliang, the Governor of Shanxi Province (born in December 1973). However, the significance of the position of Shanxi Province Governor cannot be compared to that of the Mayor of Shanghai, making Zhu Zhongming the frontrunner among high-ranking officials born after the 1970s.
In recent years, Zhu Zhongming’s previous positions in the financial system of Zhejiang Province, as well as in the government offices in Wenzhou and Hunan, have undergone purges. Former senior leaders such as Zhu Congjiu and Xu Dazhe have been investigated or faced trouble. Zhu Zhongming was even rumored to be involved in the Ma Xingrui case and his ex-wife voluntarily surrendered, yet he has now been promoted to the Mayor of Shanghai, sparking speculation about the internal power struggles within the upper ranks of the CCP.
Public records show that Zhu Zhongming was born in April 1972 in Haining, Jiaxing City, Zhejiang Province. He graduated from Wuhan University’s School of Economics with a major in auditing in April 1993. He has held various positions in the Zhejiang Provincial Finance Department, becoming the Deputy Director of the Executive Office in April 2002 and later rising to the position of Deputy Director of the Finance Department in November 2008.
During Li Qiang’s term as the Deputy Secretary of the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee, Zhu Zhongming was transferred from his position as Deputy Director of the Finance Department to Deputy Mayor of Wenzhou City, Li Qiang’s hometown, in January 2012. In August of the same year, he was promoted to a member of the Wenzhou Municipal Party Committee and Secretary of the Party Committee of Ouhai New Area Development and Construction Authority.
While Li Qiang served as the Governor of Zhejiang Province, Zhu Zhongming was appointed Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee and Deputy Director of the Zhejiang Provincial Audit Office in July 2015.
Subsequently, Zhu Zhongming became the Secretary of the Party Committee and Director of the Zhejiang Provincial Audit Office in April 2017. Then, in January 2020, he was transferred to be the Secretary of the Party Committee and Director of the Zhejiang Provincial Finance Department. In April 2020, he was cross-appointed to a member of the Party Committee of the Hunan Provincial Government and Deputy Governor. In June 2021, he moved to Beijing to serve as a member of the Party Committee and Deputy Minister of the Ministry of Finance.
After Li Qiang was promoted to a member of the Political Bureau Standing Committee of the CCP Central Committee and later as the Premier of the State Council, Zhu Zhongming once again became Li Qiang’s subordinate. In July 2024, Zhu Zhongming was appointed to lead Shanghai, Li Qiang’s previous jurisdiction, as the Deputy Secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee. A month later, he also took on the role of Secretary of the Political and Legal Affairs Committee. Two years later, he was promoted to Acting Mayor of Shanghai.
Zhu Zhongming served in various positions in the Zhejiang Provincial Finance Department, Audit Office, and the financially significant city of Wenzhou from 1993 to 2020, intertwining his career with the Zhejiang Provincial financial and banking systems.
In May 2023, Zhu Congjiu, the former Deputy Governor of Zhejiang Province, was investigated, and in November 2024, he was sentenced to life imprisonment. Zhu Congjiu previously held high positions in the China Securities Regulatory Commission and served as the General Manager of the Shanghai Stock Exchange. From May 2012 to July 2022, he served as the Deputy Governor of Zhejiang, overseeing finance for a full decade. During this time, Zhu Zhongming held various positions such as Deputy Mayor of Wenzhou City, Director of the Zhejiang Provincial Audit Office, and Director of the Finance Department, frequently collaborating with Zhu Congjiu on local financial regulatory matters and other work.
Following Zhu Congjiu’s downfall, the financial system in Zhejiang Province underwent a series of purges, with former heads of major banks’ Zhejiang branches being arrested. Additionally, several senior financial executives who had studied at Zhejiang’s banking school were investigated consecutively.
From April 2024 to present, within less than two years, multiple top executives in the banking sector in Zhejiang were arrested or voluntarily surrendered, including Guo Xingang, former General Manager of the Bank of China Zhejiang Branch (arrested in April 2024), Gao Qiang, former General Manager of the Construction Bank Zhejiang Branch (arrested in April 2025), Feng Jianlong, former General Manager of Agricultural Bank Zhejiang Branch (voluntarily surrendered in May 2024), Shen Rongqin, former General Manager of Industrial and Commercial Bank Zhejiang Branch (arrested in May 2025), Cheng Jun, current General Manager of the Bank of China Zhejiang Branch (arrested in December 2025), Tu Lianggang, former General Manager of the Bank of Communications Ningbo Branch (arrested in February 2025), Pan Guang’en, former Deputy Director of the Zhejiang Provincial Financial Office (voluntarily surrendered in January 2025), and Long Yuehui, former Party Committee Secretary and Deputy Director of the Zhejiang Provincial Taxation Bureau of the State Administration of Taxation (arrested in December 2025), among others.
Moreover, Zhu Zhongming served as Deputy Mayor of Wenzhou from January 2012 to July 2015, during which he worked with Chen Derong, Chen Yixin, and Mayor Chen Jinbiao in various capacities. Wenzhou City, a prefecture-level city in Zhejiang Province, is known as the “capital of China’s private economy.” Many influential figures from the Xi Jinping faction in the CCP’s Jiangxi New Army have governed Wenzhou. Wenzhou is also the hometown of current Political Bureau Standing Committee member and State Councilor Li Qiang, as well as State Security Minister Chen Yixin. Both Li Qiang and Chen Yixin have previously presided over Wenzhou.
According to reports from the Zhejiang Provincial Discipline Inspection Commission, since 2025, over ten officials from Wenzhou City have been investigated or voluntarily surrendered, including Liang Chao, the former Deputy Director of the Wenzhou Municipal People’s Congress, and Li Wuwen, a member of the Wenzhou Municipal Party Committee and Deputy Mayor. Liang Chao was previously a prominent figure during Chen Yixin’s governance of Wenzhou. Li Wuwen served as the head of the Rui’an City government in Wenzhou, Li Qiang’s hometown, for five years. Nearly all the fallen officials in Wenzhou have had interactions with Zhu Zhongming.
Additionally, former Chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, Yi Huiman, was investigated on September 6, 2025, while former Vice Chairman Fang Xinghai was arrested on July 24, 2026. These two individuals hail from Wenzhou. Yi Huiman is from Cangnan County in Wenzhou, while Fang Xinghai is from Yueqing City, a subordinate of Wenzhou.
On March 15, 2025, Tang Xiaoshu, the Deputy Director of the Zhejiang Provincial Department of Education, voluntarily surrendered after previously serving in various roles in Wenzhou, including Director of the Wenzhou Ocean and Fisheries Bureau, Chief of the Financial Office of the Wenzhou City Government, and Deputy Mayor. Tang Xiaoshu, a close companion of Li Qiang, Chen Yixin, and others in the Jiangxi New Army, surrendered after separation from his wife. Commentator Jiang Wangzheng revealed on March 15, 2025, that Tang Xiaoshu had turned himself in to the Zhejiang Provincial Discipline Inspection Commission the day before, and that he had already divorced Zhu Zhongming.
Before that event, in July 2021, Jiang Wangzheng disclosed on a self-media program that Tang Xiaoshu had a close relationship with Li Qiang’s wife, having accompanied her on overseas inspections. It is rare for a member of a democratic party to hold a key leadership position in the CCP’s bureaucratic system. Tang Xiaoshu, a member of the China Zhi Gong Party (Republican Alliance), not a member of the CCP, was appointed as the head of the Financial Office of the Wenzhou Municipal Government in December 2018, a position closely related to Li Qiang.
Former member of the CCP Political Bureau, Ma Xingrui, was relieved of his position as the Party Secretary of Xinjiang on July 2025 and officially ousted on April 3, 2026. Around the same time, Ma Xingrui’s associates in Guangdong and Xinjiang also faced investigation. Among them, Chen Weijun was arrested in November 2025 while serving as a member of the Standing Committee of the Xinjiang autonomous region Party Committee and the Executive Vice Chairman of the Autonomous Region Government.
Chen Weijun, originally from Ningbo, Zhejiang, served in the Zhejiang government for an extended period and was appointed Deputy Governor of Zhejiang Province in January 2018 until June 2021, concurrently serving as the Secretary of the Wenzhou Municipal Party Committee. During this time, Zhu Zhongming held positions such as Director of the Zhejiang Provincial Audit Office and Finance Department.
On December 7, 2025, Jiang Wangzheng disclosed that the investigation into Ma Xingrui was fully handled by the first Vice Secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, Liu Jinguo; Li Xi and his family were involved in the Ma Xingrui case. Additionally, 51 officials at the ministerial level or higher were implicated. Jiang Wangzheng also revealed that the Ma Xingrui case had implications reaching as high as Xi Jinping, involving officials such as Zhu Zhongming. Jiang Wangzheng further disclosed that Zhu Zhongming, who became Deputy Minister of Finance in June 2021, was responsible for transferring funds to Ma Xingrui, indicating that the investigation into Ma Xingrui had been ongoing since July 2024.
From April 2020 to June 2021, Zhu Zhongming served as a member of the Party Committee and Deputy Governor of the Hunan Provincial Government for 14 months, acting as the deputy to two successive Governors of Hunan Province, Xu Dazhe (from September 2016 to November 2020) and Mao Weiming (from November 2020 to present).
Xu Dazhe has a background in the CCP’s military system and had a long history of job rotation and collaboration with officials like Ma Xingrui in the aerospace military system and national ministries. Xu Dazhe was promoted from Governor of Hunan Province to the Party Secretary of the province in November 2020, then, within less than a year, in October 2021, he was transferred to the position of Deputy Chairman of the National People’s Congress. Xu Dazhe began to miss meetings of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress at the end of 2024, leading to rumors of his downfall. On October 28, 2025, Xu Dazhe was stripped of his qualifications as a national delegate to the People’s Congress.
According to the official website of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the CCP, since 2025, more than ten high-ranking officials from Hunan or serving in Hunan have been successively investigated, including Li Weiwei, Wu Lan, Zhou Liang, among others. While Zhu Zhongming held the position of Deputy Governor of Hunan, Li Weiwei served as the Chairman of the Hunan Provincial Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, and Wu Lan as the Deputy Secretary of the Hunan Provincial Party Committee.
During his lengthy tenure in the CCP’s financial and banking system, Zhu Zhongming has become entwined with the secretive connections of the Zhejiang, Hunan, and Ma Xingrui cases. Amidst the downfall of many former leaders, colleagues, and subordinates, his rise to the position of Mayor of Shanghai sheds light on the perplexing dynamics of the CCP’s political landscape and the intense complexity of internal power struggles.
Having previously served under Li Qiang in Zhejiang and at the State Council, Zhu Zhongming worked in Li Qiang’s hometown of Wenzhou before leading Shanghai, Li Qiang’s power base. Despite the chain of cases, Zhu Zhongming has been promoted, reflecting possible protection and recommendation from Li Qiang.
On the other hand, the continued turmoil in the financial systems in Zhejiang, the political scene in Wenzhou, and other ongoing cases cast a shadow over Zhu Zhongming’s and Li Qiang’s careers. This adds a new dimension to the escalating high-level power struggles and personnel disputes leading up to the 21st National Congress of the CCP.