Tianjin Mayor Liao Guoxun has died of sudden illness at the age of 59 on Wednesday, according to a local government statement on Thursday. He had only been in office for a year and eight months.
Liao, who was also deputy party chief of the coastal city directly administered under China’s central government, passed away despite emergency rescue efforts, the statement said without elaborating.
His last public appearance was on Monday when he attended a meeting on environment protection in Tianjin, according to a local broadcast media report. According to video footage, Liao did not exhibit any obvious signs of declining health.
The mayor is not the only incumbent ministerial-level official to die on duty in recent years. In 2019, China’s first emergency management minister, Wang Yupu, also died when he was in office.
Born in February 1963, Liao’s political career began in Southwest China’s Guizhou province where he worked in the Communist Party’s human resource unit for more than 15 years.
In 2001, Liao became the deputy general secretary for the party’s provincial committee. He then held provincial-level offices in East China’s Zhejiang and Shanghai before moving to Tianjin in August 2020.
Contact reporter Lu Zhenhua (zhenhualu@caixin.com) editor Bertrand Teo (bertrandteo@caixin.com)
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