Subscribe
Subscribe Now to receive Goldsea updates!
- Subscribe for updates on Goldsea: Asian American Supersite
Liu Yandong May Become 1st Woman in China Power Elite
By wchung | 07 Jul, 2025
Power Elite: A princeling with impeccable connections and credentials may break the glass ceiling into China's ruling circle.
State Councillor Liu Yandong is likely to become the first woman on the elite Politburo Standing Committee (PSC) which rules China, according to Boxun, a US-based Chinese-language site that sources tips from anonymous political insiders.
Liu, 66, is already a member of the Communist Party’s 25-seat Politburo which is consulted on all major leadership decisions and is the body from which the most influential leaders are drawn for appointment to the PSC. The PSC currently comprises nine members that include top leaders like President Hu Jintao, Premier Wen Jiabao and Xi Jinping, the man expected to become China’s next leader later this year.
Liu’s importance on the PSC would be even greater because its membership is expected to be reduced to seven following the 18th National Congress which will likely be held in late October or early November.
Liu is apparently handicapped to enter the PSC because she is one of the most well connected and influential Politburo members not yet on the PSC. She has been a close ally of Hu Jintao in the Communist Youth League, the source of one of the major factions within the Communist Party leadership. She was tapped to the Politburo after the 17th National Congress in 2007. Soon after that she was appointed to head up the Health, Culture and Education Ministry by Wen Jiabao. Her appointment would also help strengthen cohesion within Chinese society at a time when China’s rulers fear social unrest. No woman has ever been named to the PSC.
Liu is said to have close ties to almost most of China’s top leaders through family or career. She is seen as very close to former president Jiang Zemin and to Zeng Qinghong — another of China’s influential second-generation leaders — whose mother ran the nursery in which Liu grew up.
Liu once headed up China’s All Women Federation and spent some years working at the United Front Work Department, which coordinates ties with China’s non-Communist party elite and overseas Chinese, as well as with the leaders of Tibet, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau. She is also said to have managed the religious affairs department.
Liu was born in Nantong in Jiangsu province in 1945. Her father was a former deputy minister for agriculture. She joined the Communist Party in 1964 and studied political science at Jilin University and engineering at Beijing’s prestigious Tsinghua University. She soon became the head of the Kaiping chemical plant in Tangshan, then of an experimental chemical plant in Beijing. She later entered politics full time.
She is married to Yang Yuanxing, another princeling who runs a technology company.
State Councillor Liu Yandong is expected to become the first woman on the elite Politburo Standing Committee which rules China.
Articles
- Shipbuilding Cooperation, Cost of US Forces Loom Large in S. Korea Tariff Talks
- Dollars Slides to Multi-Year Lows on Scarcity of Tariff Deals
- Investors No Longer Take Tariff Deadline Seriously
- Several Trade Deals Imminent Says Bessent Ahead of Deadline
- Anti-DEI Firm Azoria Postpones Tesla ETF After Musk Forms New Party
Asian American Success Stories
- The 130 Most Inspiring Asian Americans of All Time
- 12 Most Brilliant Asian Americans
- Greatest Asian American War Heroes
- Asian American Digital Pioneers
- New Asian American Imagemakers
- Asian American Innovators
- The 20 Most Inspiring Asian Sports Stars
- 5 Most Daring Asian Americans
- Surprising Superstars
- TV’s Hottest Asians
- 100 Greatest Asian American Entrepreneurs
- Asian American Wonder Women
- Greatest Asian American Rags-to-Riches Stories
- Notable Asian American Professionals