1. Liu Yandong recently served as the Vice Premier of China, and was a member of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party from 2007 to 2017, a State Councilor between 2007 and 2012, and was head of the United Front Work Department of the Communist Party between 2002 and 2007.
Liu Yandong was born in November 1945 in Nantong County, Jiangsu, in what was then Republic of China.
Liu Yandong entered the prestigious Tsinghua University in 1964, weathered the Cultural Revolution, and graduated in 1970 with a degree in chemistry.
Shortly after graduation, Liu Yandong began work at a chemical production plant in Tangshan, an industrial city in northeastern China, in what was likely an assignment by the state.
In 1982, Liu Yandong began working for the Communist Youth League, where she worked with contemporaries Wang Zhaoguo, Hu Jintao, and Song Defu.
Liu Yandong worked at the Youth League for nine years.
Widely speculated to become Vice-Premier in an upcoming leadership reshuffle, by 2007, Liu Yandong was the sole woman with a seat on the Politburo and the highest ranked female politician in China.
Liu Yandong was deputy chair of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Olympic Games.
Liu Yandong became the first woman since Deng Yingchao to serve consecutive terms on the Politburo.
Since 2013, Liu Yandong has been the leader of the Leading Group for Health Care Reform.