Zhao Leji was elected chairman of the provincial people's congress standing committee of north China's Shaanxi and Yuan Chunqing was re-elected governor on Wednesday.

Zhao, born in 1957, was elected secretary of the Shaanxi Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) last March and is now heading the provincial legislature.

He graduated from the department of philosophy at Peking University in 1980 and had served in various business and governmental posts before becoming party chief of Qinghai Province in 2003.

Yuan had been acting governor of Shaanxi before being elected governor last February.

Born in 1952, he started his career as a local police officer. He then went to Peking University to further his education and obtained a law degree.

Yuan had served in the Communist Youth League and the CPC Central Commission for Discipline Inspection before moving to Shaanxi in 2001 to become deputy secretary of the Provincial Party Committee.

(Xinhua News Agency January 24, 2008)