Communist Party Secretary of Tianjin , Zhang Gaoli attends a panel discussion of the Tianjin delegation during the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Nov. 9,2012.
The party chief of Tianjin, the massive port city near Beijing that has ambitions to become one of China’s economic centers, Zhang, 65, served as a Party official in other fast-developing centers of China, including boomtown Shenzhen near Hong Kong. Aligned with Jiang Zemin, the college economics graduate is a particularly low-profile member of the new Standing Committee. But one thing’s clear: the double-digit growth rates he has overseen in Tianjin depended as much on cheap credit and a state-directed infrastructure binge as on any grand vision for the future.