Cai Qi, the fifth-ranked member in the Communist Party’s hierarchy, has been picked to head the Central Party School, the top training ground for cadres.
Cai, 70, sits on the elite Politburo Standing Committee and is secretary of the party’s secretariat as well as director of the party’s general office.
Responsible for daily operations of the party’s nerve centre, Cai is often referred to as President Xi Jinping’s chief of staff.
His new post at the party school means that he will also oversee the training and selection of the party’s top officials.
The appointment became public on Friday when state broadcaster CCTV reported on a school graduation ceremony.
Cai has worked with Xi for decades and long been seen as one of his closest aides.
The two men first crossed paths in the eastern province of Fujian in the 1980s and again in neighbouring Zhejiang province in the 2000s, when Xi was promoted to various leadership positions.
In 2014, two years after Xi became party leader, Cai moved to Beijing where he was appointed executive deputy director of the new National Security Commission. In 2017, Cai was named party chief of Beijing, a Politburo member and head of the coordination team for the 2022 Winter Olympics.
The party school was established in 1933 in Ruijin, Jiangxi province, as the Central Committee’s Marx School of Communism with the goal of training promising party officials, including the next generation of leaders.
In 2018, the party school was merged with the National Academy of Governance as part of an overhaul to consolidate the training institutions and courses for officials.
Cai succeeded Chen Xi, a college classmate and another Xi ally who took on the job in 2017 after a stint in charge of the Organisation Department, which oversees personnel appointments.
Other school heads have included Xi and his presidential predecessor Hu Jintao.
Liu Yunshan, former secretary of the party secretariat, also headed the central party school from 2013 to 2017.
Additional reporting by Laura Zhou