Huang Qifan has been elected mayor of Chongqing municipality. He replaces Wang Hongju, who resigned from his post last month.

Huang is a 57-year-old native of Zhejiang province who was vice mayor of Chongqing from October 2001 to December 2009. In recent weeks he served as acting mayor and vice secretary of the Communist Party’s Chongqing municipal committee.

Huang started his working life in 1968 at a Shanghai coking plant and he received an MBA from the China Europe International Business School in December 1999 while serving as deputy secretary general of Shanghai municipal government.

Chongqing’s GDP reached Rmb652.7bn in 2009, up 14.9 per cent year-on-year, according to the National Bureau of Statistics. This growth rate was the third highest in China last year, behind only Inner Mongolia autonomous region and Tianjin municipality.