XI'AN - Zhao Zhengyong was elected governor of northwest China's Shaanxi Province Saturday at the ongoing fourth session of the 11th provincial People's Congress, the local legislature, in the provincial capital of Xi'an.

Zhao, born in March 1951, was a native of Ma'anshan City of east China's Anhui Province.

Joining the Communist Party of China (CPC) in November 1973, Zhao majored in metallic physics when he studied at the materials department of Zhongnan Mining and Metallurgical College in Changsha, capital city of central China's Hunan Province, from October 1974 to August 1977.

He worked in Ma'anshan Iron and Steel Company in Anhui in the 1970s and served as local deputy party chief and then party chief in Huangshan City of the province from May 1992 to April 1998.

Since 1998, he worked as head of the provincial public security bureau of Anhui before he was transferred to Shaanxi in 2001, where he served as member of the standing committee of the CPC provincial committee, vice governor and acting governor.

He was a visiting scholar at Harvard University of the United States between August and December 2007.