Zhao Leji was born in Xining, Qinghai province. His parents were from Xi'an, Shaanxi province. The family moved to Qinghai as part of the aid the frontiers programs of the Mao years. During the later years of the Cultural Revolution, Zhao went to the countryside to perform manual labour on a commune. After working there for about a year, Zhao returned to the city to become a communications assistant at the Commerce Department of Qinghai province. Zhao joined the Communist Party in 1975 and entered Peking University in 1977 as a gongnongbing student; he studied philosophy there until January 1980. He then spent three years teaching at the Qinghai School of Commerce and overseeing the Communist Youth League wing of the provincial department of commerce. In 1985, he was transferred to a Qinghai-based metal products company to be its party chief. In April 1986, he became deputy head of the provincial department of commerce.
Qinghai
Zhao entered the provincial government in 1993, becoming part of the inner circle of then Qinghai party secretary Yin Kesheng. He was then elevated to vice-governor, then Communist Party Secretary of his hometown Xining. He acceded to the post of governor in 1999 at age 42, becoming the youngest provincial governor in the country at the time. Having 'jumped' several levels in a short period of time, Zhao's upward trajectory began to slow by the turn of the century. Zhao became party chief of Qinghai in 2003 after having spent nearly five years in the Governor's office. Part of his inability to move to a more economically prosperous and more politically visible province was attributed to his Shaanxi background. He spoke in Shaanxi dialect even at government meetings. Zhao's tenure in Qinghai was marked by rapid economic growth, and a tripling of the province's GDP from the time he took office as Governor to when he left as party chief in 2007. It was said that Zhao took a relatively soft approach on ethnic minority issues and took on environmentally conscious investment projects. His achievements in Qinghai were lauded by the party's central leadership.
Shaanxi
In 2007, Zhao was transferred to become party secretary in his parents' home province of Shaanxi, having taken on the top jobs in both his 'native' province and the province of his birth, breaking an unspoken rule in the Communist Party that party chiefs should never hail from the province they are native to. This was seen as an indication of the trust shown to Zhao by the central leadership. In 2008, Shaanxi's GDP growth figures hit 15%, becoming one of only two provincial-level divisions to set sights on GDP growth rates of over 13%. In Shaanxi, Zhao oversaw the expansion and development of the GuanZhong-TianShui economic belt. After the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in November 2012, he was appointed member of the Politburo and head of the Organization Department of the Communist Party of China. Zhao was a member of the 16th and 17th Central Committee and the 18th Politburo of the Communist Party of China.
