57-year old Zhuang Rongwen was named on August 1, to head the Cyberspace Administration of China. He had been a Deputy Director since 2015.  Zhuang Rongwen succeeds Xu Lin, a propaganda official who had held the job since June 2016. The South China Morning Post reported last week that Xu Lin would take over as Director of the State Council Information Office. 

(Comment: Zhuang Rongwen spent his early career as an engineer and economic planner in the southeastern province of Fujian, where he worked under Xi Jinping. During Xi Jinping’s term as Fujian’s deputy party chief from 1995 to 2002, Zhuang Rongwen held senior posts in the provincial economic-planning committee. He later became Director of Fujian’s Science and Technology Bureau, before transferring in late 2010 to a central-government office that handles liaison work with overseas Chinese. He joined the Cyberspace Administration in 2015 and this year became a Vice Minister of the Communist Party’s propaganda department.)