Standing in the Party and Career Highlights:

On 1 September 2012 Xinhua announced that Du Qinglin would be retiring and he was replaced by Ling Jihua. Du is now a member of the 18th CPC Central Committee Secretariat and remains a Vice Chair of the CPPCC.

Du Qinglin joined the CPC in 1966. Thrived during Cultural Revolution. Worked for 14 years in a Jilin automobile factory, rising to deputy director and vice secretary of the factory’s Party Committee.

Between 1979 and 1984 Du was Party Secretary of Communist Youth League in Jilin Province. This was followed by various other positions in Jilin Province until 1998.

1998 – 2001 Party secretary of Hainan Province.

2001 – 2006 Minister of Agriculture. In 2002, he said that he was working to improve the “troubled food safety and inspection system” in order to increase exports. When Minister of Agriculture, was the object of at least one letter-writing campaign by PETA with regard to methods of killing animals for fur. He also ate chicken on TV to demonstrate that bird flu had been contained.

December 2006 – December 2007, Party Secretary of Sichuan Province.

December 2007 succeeded Liu Yandong as Head of United Front Work Department. He was written about as being a protégé or ally of Hu Jintao, with the potential for promotion, but no details are given except for the Communist Youth League connection.

A 2014 New York Times blog reported that a representative of an “NGO” called China Association for Preservation and Development of Tibetan Culture had been barred from the UN Human Rights Council for intimidating a Chinese woman giving testimony about her detained father. China Association for Preservation and Development of Tibetan Culture’s leaders include Du Qinglin; Zhu Weiqun, a former deputy head of the United Front Work Department and Zhang Yijiong, current deputy head of UFWD. The “NGO”, which has an address in Beijing adjacent to the United Front Work Department, has not itself been barred from the Human Rights Council.

Quotations By:

• World Buddhist Forum, 28 March 2009: “We anticipate that the Buddhism circle in the world will continue to carry forward the spirit of ‘harmony and synergy’, manifest the feelings of mercy and compassion, reclaim people’s internal spirits, help resolve the difficulties so as to promote the harmonious coexistence between man and nature, man and society, man to man as well as man’s internal world.”
• Responding to Memorandum on Genuine Autonomy, November 2008: “The Dalai Lama should respect history, face reality and conform to the times, as well as fundamentally change his political propositions.”
• Shigatse August 2010 at a conference on democratic management of Tibetan monasteries. “Competent Tibetan Buddhist monks and nuns who are politically reliable, extraordinarily learned and widely respected should be selected to monastery management committees through thorough democratic consultation.” (our emphasis)

The UFWD’s 7th bureau was established 2005 to handle Tibetan affairs: according to Singtao Daily its mission is “to cooperate with relevant parties in struggling against secessionism by enemies, both local and foreign, such as the Dalai Lama clique, and to liaise with overseas Tibetans.”

Du Qinglin’s Contact Information:

• Address: Zhongnanhai, Xi Chang’an Jie, Beijing 100017.
• Website: www.gov.cn
• Phone: + 86 10 6307 0913
• Fax: + 86 10 6307 0900

Du Qinglin Profile Downloads:

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