Government and public security heads in Zhuhai, southern China, have been replaced, as part of a sidelining of officials deemed responsible for last month’s car attack that killed at least 35 people and shocked the nation.
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The city’s mayor Huang Zhihao and Xie Rensi, director of the public security bureau, resigned on Sunday, according to the WeChat account of the Standing Committee of the Zhuhai People’s Congress.
In the social media statement, the congress named Wu Zetong as acting mayor and Qiao Lei as deputy mayor and head of public security. Both were parachuted in from outside Zhuhai, in Guangdong province.
Also on Sunday, Liu Qiying, governor of Xiangzhou district where the attack occurred, and vice-governor Fu Hui, resigned. Zhang Huiyang, a party committee member in nearby Zhongshan, was named as acting district governor.
Wu, 44, was previously in Yunfu – another Guangdong city – as deputy mayor and a member of the municipal party’s standing committee. Before that, he worked in Meizhou, Zhaoqing, and on the Guangdong Development and Reform Committee.
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Qiao, 54, has headed public security bureaus in Dongguan and Jiangmen. He has also worked in the criminal and cybercrimes divisions of Guangzhou police, as well as their intelligence and information centre.
Huang was Zhuhai’s mayor from January 2021, while Xie was assigned in December 2021. It is rare to see such a cluster of senior personnel changes. Top heads are rarely replaced all at once, but previous incidents have not seen such high death tolls.