The Communist Party chief in China's far northwest Xinjiang region, where Beijing is accused of having carried out a massive crackdown on Muslim minorities, is leaving the post after some seven years, Chinese state-run media said on Sunday.
Chen Quanguo, who is on a US blacklist for his role in the alleged mistreatment of ethnic Uyghurs and other Muslims, is to be replaced by Ma Xingrui, governor of Guangdong province.
He's the party secretary in an autonomous region, not the regional governor. There's some separation between the party secretaries and the reginal governors, though they're often both members of the CPC because that's the biggest political party in all of China including the autonomous regions.