The China Construction Bank Corporation (CCB) announced in Beijing Friday that Guo Shuqing has been elected chairman of the board of directors of the bank.

The CCB interim shareholders' conference and the meeting of the board of directors that opened in Beijing held that Guo Shuqing has leadership experiences in both the former State Planning Commission and the State Commission for Restructuring the Economy, and worked as vice governor of Guizhou Province, vice governor of the People's Bank of China and director of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange. A man of strategic vision, strong sense of reform and innovation, and chairman of the bank, Guo will play an important role in promoting CCB's reform and development and the process of internationalization.

The announcement says the CCB is at a critical time of reform and development, it will resolutely seize the opportunity to promote the bank's share-holding restructure process and other undertakings in an all-round way in line with the state's unified deployment.

Guo Shuqing said he will certainly not let down the expectations of the state, shareholders, clients and staff of the bank. He will work closely with the whole bank and make efforts tocontinuously push forward the bank's reform and development, and build the CCB into a modern commercial bank with international competitive edge.

Profile of Guo Shuqing

Newly-elected CCB Chairman Guo Shuqing Guo, a doctoral research fellow, was born in north China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region in August, 1956.

He studied philosophy at the Nankai University in Tianjin and Marxism and Leninism at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences from 1978 to 1985.

In 1986 he spent a year at Oxford's St. Antony's College as a visiting scholar.

Guo was deputy director of the former State Planning Commission's Economic Research Center and then a department leader and senior official of the former State Commission for Restructuring the Economy from 1988 to 1998.

He was elected vice governor of the impoverished southwestern province of Guizhou in July, 1998.

Guo became vice governor of the People's Bank of China, the country's central bank and director of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange in March 2001.

In December, 2003, he was elected chairman of the Central Huijin Investment Company Ltd., which has injected hefty funds into state-owned banks on behalf of the central government in a bailout package to reform the vital banking system.

(Xinhua News Agency March 26, 2005)