Shanghai municipal government appointed the former party chief of Songjiang District as the new state-owned asset regulator chief after the predecessor was caught in the city's pension fund scandal.

Yang Guoxiong, 51, officially took the post with Shanghai's State-Asset Supervision & Administration Commission yesterday, the city's State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission said on its Website.

Yang worked as the director of the city's south Songjiang District through August 2000 to March 2003, and became the secretary of the Party Commission in the district.

Shanghai had at least 730 billion yuan (US$93 billion) worth of state-owned assets by end of last year, significantly jumping by 40 billion yuan on a yearly basis, said the commission.

Ling Baoheng, former director of the commission, was "assisting the investigation" of the misuse of the city's pension fund with the Disciplinary Commission of the Communist Party of China, a municipal government spokesman said in a previous statement.

Wu Hongmei, one of Ling's deputies, was also under investigation, according to the statement.

China's latest anti-corruption campaign, initiated in August, has implicated dozens of high-ranking state officials and corporate executives, with former Shanghai Party secretary Chen Liangyu dismissed in September.

The city's 10-billion-yuan (US$1.27 billion) corporate annuities have reportedly been managed via irregular loans without proper collateral and placed in long-term investments such as real-estate projects with liquidity risks.

(Shanghai Daily November 29, 2006)