China: Mayor of Tianjin, Major Port City, Dies Suddenly

Liao Guoxun, the mayor of a major port city in northern China called Tianjin, died suddenly on Wednesday due to an undisclosed illness at the age of 59, China’s Caixin Global media outlet reported on Friday.

“Liao, who was also deputy [Communist Party] party chief of the coastal city directly administered under China’s central government, passed away despite emergency rescue efforts,” Caixin Global relayed on April 29, citing an April 28 Tianjin government statement.

Liao’s last public appearance took place on April 25, “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,” Caixin Global reported.

Caixin Global is a Chinese media group based in Beijing, China’s national capital. Tianjin is a municipality that borders Beijing to its southeast and is home to an estimated population of 13.9 million.

The South China Morning Post (SCMP) on April 29 relayed some of Liao’s last public comments made on April 25 during his appearance at the Tianjin government’s anti-environmental pollution meeting. The SCMP cited as its source an April 26 article by the Tianjin Daily, which is the municipality’s Communist Party-run newspaper.

“[We] must resolutely implement Xi Jinping’s thoughts on ecological civilisation … and fight the battle for blue sky, clean water and earth with greater determination, strong strength and higher standards,” Liao said at the forum.

He referred to Chinese leader Xi Jinping, who serves as the Chinese Communist Party’s General Secretary.

The state-run Tianjin TV aired segments of the anti-pollution conference on April 25 that showed Liao alongside Tianjin Communist Party Chief Li Hongzhong and other Party officials.

Liao on the morning of April 24 “chaired a municipal government meeting which reviewed a plan to promote employment,” according to the SCMP.

The Hong Kong-based newspaper provided some background on Liao’s personal and professional history, writing:

Liao was born in the southwestern province of Sichuan but spent most of his life in neighbouring Guizhou, where he became a middle-school teacher after graduating from a university in its provincial capital Guiyang.

He began his political career in 1986, working in the party committee’s organisation department in Kaili, a county-level city in Guizhou, before moving to the provincial party committee’s organisation department in 1993.

In 2007, Liao became deputy party chief of the city of Tongren and was promoted to the city’s party chief a decade later. His career accelerated in 2012 when he was named a member of the standing committee and secretary general of the Guizhou provincial party committee.

Liao served as Tianjin’s mayor for one year and eight months prior to his passing on April 26. The “sudden illness” that reportedly caused Liao’s death earlier this week remained undisclosed at press time on Friday. Tianjin recently suffered from an epidemic of the Chinese coronavirus that prompted the city to enforce residential community lockdowns starting in January. Tianjin’s neighbor, Beijing, began implementing similar lockdowns on April 29 to contain its own fresh outbreak of the disease.