Profile: China ushers in new cabinet leadership (4)

VICE PREMIERS: RESPONSIBLE AND UNDERSTANDING

Zhang Gaoli is a member of the Political Bureau of the 17th CPC Central Committee and a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the 18th CPC Central Committee. Liu Yandong and Wang Yang are both members of the Political Bureau of the 17th and 18th CPC Central Committees, while Ma Kai is a member of the Political Bureau of the 18th CPC Central Committee.

All four vice premiers have ordinary work experience. Zhang was once a crane operator and loader at an oil company in Guangdong's city of Maoming. Liu worked in production at the Kaiping Chemical Plant in the city of Tangshan in Hebei Province, as well as at the Beijing Chemical Trial Plant, in the 1970s.

Since his father died when he was still young, Wang Yang started working at a food factory at an early age to help out his family. Ma Kai worked as a middle school teacher for five years.

All four vice premiers hold bachelor's degrees or greater. Zhang graduated from the Xiamen University, while Liu studied in the Department of Chemistry in the Tsinghua University before she earned both a master's degree and a doctorate degree in law in the 1990s from the Department of Sociology of the Renmin University and the College of Administration at the Jilin University, respectively.

Wang Yang holds a master's degree in engineering, while Ma Kai was admitted to the Department of Political Economics of the Renmin University in 1979. He was one of the first master economists to emerge after the Cultural Revolution.

Zhou Tianyong, a professor from the Party School of CPC Central Committee, said the members of this government are facing greater reform-related tasks than those faced by their predecessors, as a series of new domestic and international situations will require the government to continue to improve its ability to govern and create more scientific policies.