(Yicai Global) Dec. 28 -- China’s state-owned assets regulator said Zhang Yuzhuo, a former chairman of Sinopec and a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, has been appointed as its party secretary.

The sixty-year-old energy expert succeeded Hao Peng, who was reassigned as party secretary of the Liaoning Provincial Party Committee last month, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission said on its website yesterday. Hao was also SASAC chairman, a position still left vacant.

Zhang is a long-time researcher in the energy sector and worked for many years at Shenhua Group, China's largest coal mining company. He was elected a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering in 2011 and became Shenhua's chairman in 2014.

In December 2016, Shenhua invested CNY55 billion (USD7.9 billion) to build the world's largest coal-to-liquids project in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region with an annual capacity of 4 million tons of oil. Zhang headed the project.

He was transferred to the Standing Committee of the Tianjin Municipal Party Committee in 2017.

Zhang became chairman of Sinopec Group, China's largest oil refining company, in 2020. At Sinopec, he was committed to promoting clean energy transformation and the development of new energy businesses, including hydrogen, solar, geothermal, and wind energy.

Editor: Martin Kadiev