Yang Xiaobo (January 1963 – 27 January 2020) was a Chinese structural engineer, politician, and insurance executive. He served as President of the Central South Architectural Design Institute (2003–2007), Mayor of

Huangshi Huangshi (), Postal Map Romanization, alternatively romanized as Hwangshih, is a prefecture-level city in southeastern Hubei province, People's Republic of China. Its population was 2,469,079 inhabitants at the 2020 census; 1,567,108 of whom liv ...

Hubei Hubei (; ; alternately Hupeh) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, and is part of the Central China region. The name of the province means "north of the lake", referring to its position north of Dongting Lake. The ...

(2009–2014), and President of Changjiang Property Insurance Company (2014–2020), and was a delegate to the

12th National People's Congress The 12th National People's Congress was elected in national congressional conferences from October 2012 to February 2013 and was in session from 2013 to 2018. It succeeded the 11th National People's Congress. It held five plenary sessions in t ...

(2013–2018). He died of severe

pneumonia Pneumonia is an inflammatory condition of the lung primarily affecting the small air sacs known as alveoli. Symptoms typically include some combination of productive or dry cough, chest pain, fever, and difficulty breathing. The severi ...

during the

COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei The COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei was first manifested by a cluster of mysterious pneumonia in Wuhan, the provincial capital of Hubei, China. A Wuhan hospital notified the local center for disease control and prevention (CDC) and health commissions ...

Early life and education

Yang was born in January 1963 in

Tianmen Tianmen () is a sub-prefecture-level city (sometimes considered a county-level city) in central Hubei Province, China. It is on the Jianghan Plain, on the west side of Wuhan (the biggest city of Central China, as well as the capital of Hubei) ...

. He entered

Beijing Jiaotong University Beijing Jiaotong University ( Chinese: 北京交通大学), formerly Northern Jiaotong University, is one of the oldest public universities in mainland China. The main campus is located in the Haidian District in central Beijing. Its coordinates ...

in 1981, majoring in structural engineering. After earning his bachelor's degree in September 1985, he pursued graduate studies at

Tianjin University Tianjin University (TJU, ), formerly Peiyang University (), is a national public research university in Tianjin, China. The university was established in 1895 by Guangxu Emperor's royal charter to be the first university of China. It is now fu ...

, earning his master's degree in structural engineering in June 1988. He joined the

Communist Party of China The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the CCP emerged victorious in the Chinese Civil ...

in May 1988.

Career

In June 1988, Yang became an engineer at the Central South Architectural Design Institute, where he worked in structural design of industrial and residential buildings. He later earned an

MBA A Master of Business Administration (MBA; also Master's in Business Administration) is a postgraduate degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration such as accounti ...

degree from

Ohio University Ohio University is a public research university in Athens, Ohio. The first university chartered by an Act of Congress and the first to be chartered in Ohio, the university was chartered in 1787 by the Congress of the Confederation and subseq ...

in the United States. He was promoted to President of the Central South Architectural Design Institute in April 2003, serving until 2007. Yang entered the Hubei Provincial Government in April 2007 to serve as Director of the Department of Construction. He subsequently studied at the

Central Party School of the Communist Party of China The Central Party School of the Chinese Communist Party (), commonly known as the Central Party School (), located in Beijing, is the higher education institution which trains Chinese Communist Party (CCP) cadres. As of 2012, it has around 1,60 ...

from March 2008 to January 2009, and was appointed acting mayor and later Mayor of

, a

prefecture-level city A prefecture-level city () or prefectural city is an administrative division of the People's Republic of China (PRC), ranking below a province and above a county in China's administrative structure. During the Republican era, many of China ...

east of

Wuhan Wuhan (, ; ; ) is the capital of Hubei Province in the People's Republic of China. It is the largest city in Hubei and the most populous city in Central China, with a population of over eleven million, the ninth-most populous Chinese city an ...

, in February 2009. He also concurrently served as Deputy Party Secretary of Huangshi. He was a member of the 10th Hubei Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China and a delegate to the

(2013–2018). In December 2014, Yang was appointed President of Changjiang Property Insurance Company Ltd., a joint venture established in 2011 by China Guodian Corporation together with several state-owned enterprises controlled by the Hubei provincial government. It was headquartered in Wuhan, the capital of Hubei province. Under his leadership, the company signed strategic cooperation agreements with many local governments in Hubei, but also received many citations from the

China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission The China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC) is an agency of the People's Republic of China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and depend ...

for violating industry regulations. It was fined 100,000 yuan in March 2019 for appointing people lacking professional qualifications to top executive positions.

Death

Yang made his last public appearance on 17 December 2019. On 1 January 2020, he sent a new year's greeting to all employees of Changjiang Property Insurance. On 28 January 2020, Chinese media reported that Yang Xiaobo had died of severe

at age 57 during the

. He was one of the 100 people who had died during the outbreak in Hubei by that date.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Yang, Xiaobo 1963 births 2020 deaths 20th-century Chinese engineers 20th-century Chinese businesspeople 21st-century Chinese engineers 21st-century Chinese businesspeople 21st-century Chinese politicians Beijing Jiaotong University alumni Chinese businesspeople in insurance Chinese chief executives Chinese structural engineers Chinese Communist Party politicians from Hubei Deaths from pneumonia in the People's Republic of China Delegates to the 12th National People's Congress Mayors of places in China Ohio University alumni People's Republic of China politicians from Hubei Political office-holders in Hubei Politicians from Tianmen Tianjin University alumni Deaths from the COVID-19 pandemic in China