Zhou Qiang, former acting governor of central China's Hunan Province, was elected governor of the province by the provincial legislature on Saturday.

Zhou, 46, was elected to the post at the fifth session of the 10th Hunan Provincial People's Congress.

A native of the Huangmei County in the adjacent Hubei Province, he graduated from the Southwest University of Political Science and Law with a master's degree in 1985. He then worked in the Ministry of Justice before being transferred to the Secretariat of the Central Committee of China's Communist Youth League in 1995, where he became the First Secretary in 1998. Zhou moved to Hunan in September 2006 to serve as deputy secretary of the Hunan Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China.

From late September last year, he also served as acting governor of Hunan.

Zhou is also member of the 16th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.

His predecessor, 58-year-old Zhou Bohua, who had held the post since January 2004, is now Party Secretary and Director of the State Administration for Industry and Commerce.

(Xinhua News Agency February 5, 2007)