He Guoqiang was born in Xiangxiang, Hunan in 1943. He joined the Communist Party of China in January 1966 and joined the work force in September 1966. He graduated from the Inorganic Chemistry Department at the Beijing Institute of Chemical Engineering where he had majored in inorganics. With his university education, he held the title of Senior Engineer. He was first assigned to work as a technician at the synthesis division of the Lunan Chemical Fertilizer Plant in Shandong. During his eleven years there he eventually made his way up to party branch secretary. Eventually He became an official at the chemical industry department of the Shandong provincial government. After that, he began taking on increasingly senior administrative roles, ascending through the ranks to become Party Committee Secretary in Jinan, the capital of Shandong, in 1987, and a member of the Shandong provincial Party Standing Committee. In 1991, he became deputy minister of Chemical Industry. In October 1996, He was transferred to Fujian to become deputy governor, then acting governor. He assumed the post of the Governor of Fujian between 1997 and 1999. In June 1999, he was named the party secretary of Chongqing, only the second person to take on the job after the city gained direct-controlled municipality status. He remained in Chongqing until 2002. He moved to national prominence that year, becoming the head of the Organization Department of the Communist Party of China, overseeing party personnel. He was named to the Politburo Standing Committee at the 17th Party Congress in November 2007, heading up the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, in charge of stamping out corruption with party officials, replacing Wu Guanzheng. He was ordered by General SecretaryHu Jintao to go into earthquake areas in the aftermath of the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. He Guoqiang was said to be a 'moderating' force on the PSC, with no apparent loyalties to any particular factions or patrons.
Family
He Guoqiang's eldest son, , is a former soldier who eventually went into business. He Jintao founded the private equity firm Nepoch Capital. He Jintao worked with Morgan Stanley and China Resources on various investment projects. Several media sources have linked He Jintao with the corruption case involving Song Lin, former chief executive of China Resources. He Guoqiang's second son, He Jinlei, was a vice president at the investment arm of China Development Bank, CDB Capital, a state-owned company which invested heavily in Alibaba's initial public offering in 2014. The wives and children of both of He Guoqiang's sons are said to be living in the San Francisco BayArea of the United States. In May 2014, U.S.-based Chinese-language website Duowei reported that He's successor as central discipline secretary Wang Qishan scheduled a meeting with him to discuss ongoing investigation into the business activities of his sons, and He Jintao specifically. The same article mentioned that the likelihood of He Guoqiang's personal involvement in corruption was low, and that He urged his sons to cooperate with the investigation.
