Former Governor of Guangdong Province Zhu Senlin passed away yesterday (August 10) in Guangzhou. Although Zhu Senlin was from another province, he was considered a local figure due to his long-term service in Guangdong, and he was involved in the power struggle between the central and local governments.
According to the official Guangdong Communist Party newspaper “Southern Daily,” Zhu Senlin, former Deputy Secretary of the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee, former Governor of the province, and former Director of the Standing Committee of the Provincial People’s Congress, passed away in Guangzhou at 11:36 am on August 10 at the age of 96 due to ineffective medical treatment.
Public records show that Zhu Senlin was born in October 1930 in Chuansha, Shanghai. He served in various positions in Guangdong, including deputy director of the Propaganda Office of the Guangzhou Municipal Revolutionary Committee, director of the Office of the Propaganda Department of the Guangzhou Municipal Committee, secretary of the Guangzhou Yuexiu District Committee, and the first political commissar of the armed forces.
He later served as the Deputy Secretary-General of the Guangzhou Municipal Committee and Director of the General Office, member of the Municipal Committee, and director of the Policy Research Office. He then held positions such as Deputy Secretary of the Guangzhou Municipal Party Committee and Mayor of Guangzhou. Subsequently, he became Secretary of the Guangzhou Municipal Party Committee, member of the Provincial Party Committee, and the first political commissar of the Guangzhou Garrison after 1988.
After 1991, Zhu Senlin served as the Deputy Secretary of the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee and Acting Governor, and eventually Governor. He later became the Director of the Standing Committee of the Guangdong Provincial People’s Congress and Party Secretary, retiring in February 2001.
Prior to the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, local powers dominated the official circles in Guangdong. The position of the provincial governor had not been held by an outsider for many years, leading to the notion of the “Guangdong clique.”
Zhu Senlin was the first non-Guangdong native to serve as the mayor of Guangzhou. However, due to his long tenure in Guangzhou, he was considered a local figure.
The local powers in Guangdong were mainly divided into three major factions: Hakka, Teochew, and Cantonese. The “Hakka clique,” represented by Marshal Ye Jianying, a former chairman of the Guangdong provincial government after 1949, was the most influential among them.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the local powers in Guangdong reached their peak.
In 1991, then leader of the Communist Party, Jiang Zemin, made Ye Jianying’s eldest son, Ye Xuanping (67), relinquish his position as Governor of Guangdong Province in exchange for a promotion to the deputy national level as Vice Chairman of the Political Consultative Conference. Ye Xuanping was later appointed as a member, standing committee member, and vice chairman of the National Committee of the Political Consultative Conference. He resigned from his positions as Governor and Deputy Secretary of the Provincial Party Committee more than a month later.
When Ye Xuanping stepped down as Governor of Guangdong, the “Hakka clique” successfully arranged for Xie Fei to take over as the Party Secretary of the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee, and Zhu Senlin, groomed by Ye Jianying, to succeed as the Governor of Guangdong.
In 1998, Jiang Zemin proposed that his confidante, the incumbent Secretary of the Henan Provincial Party Committee, Li Changchun, take over as the Secretary of the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee. With the condition that Ye Xuanping retained his position as Vice Chairman of the National Committee of the Political Consultative Conference for a term, Ye agreed to Jiang’s proposal, allowing Li Changchun to take over Guangdong that year. Thus, the Ye family’s control over Guangdong was broken.
Since Xi Jinping took office, he has been cleaning up the local powers in Guangdong, such as Zhu Mingguo, former chairman of the provincial CPPCC, Wan Qingliang, Party Secretary of the Guangzhou Municipal Committee, Li Jia, Party Secretary of Zhuhai City, and Vice Governor Liu Zhigeng.
Ye Jianying’s second son, Ye Xianning, and eldest son, Ye Xuanping, passed away in 2016 and 2019 respectively, leading to a decline in the Ye family’s power. In recent years, the majority of the members of the standing committee of the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee are outsiders.