Zhang Dejiang, a member of the Politburo of the 16th Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, was re-elected on Friday secretary of the CPC Guangdong Provincial Committee.

Zhang was elected to the post at the first plenary session of the 10th CPC Guangdong Provincial Committee which closed on Friday after setting major economic and social development goals for the southern economic powerhouse over the next five years.

Zhang, a native of Tai'an, northeastern Liaoning Province, was born in November 1946. He studied the Korean language at Yanbian University in Jilin Province between 1972 and 1975. Later he studied economics at the Kim Il Sung Comprehensive University in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

Zhang became party chief of Guangdong in November 2002 after serving in the same posts in Jilin Province and eastern Zhejiang Province between 1995 and 2002.

Guangdong, currently the biggest GDP contributor on the Chinese mainland, is expecting its GDP to grow by nine-percent a year over the next five years, said Zhang at the gathering which opened on May 21.

Guangdong's GDP reached 2.59 trillion yuan (336.3 billion U.S. dollars) last year, accounting for 12.5 percent of the country's total GDP, up from 11.1 percent in 2001.

"Guangdong will continue to open and reform and give priority to the coordinated development between rural and urban areas," said Zhang.

The province, with a population of 91 million in 2005 -- about seven percent of the country's total, was the first to benefit from the country's opening up and reform polices put forward in 1978.

Source: Xinhua