SHIJIAZHUANG - Xu Qin was appointed vice governor and acting governor of north China's Hebei province on Friday.

The decision was announced at a morning session of the standing committee of the provincial legislature, which also accepted the resignation of governor Zhang Qingwei

Xu, who was born in 1961, graduated from the Beijing Institute of Technology with a major in optoelectronics, according to an introduction from the official website of the Hebei provincial government.

He had worked with the National Development and Reform Commission and earned a doctorate from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University before moving to south China's Shenzhen in 2008, where he served as the mayor from June 2010 to March 2017.