Former Guangdong governor Zhu Senlin, enforcer of southern reform, dies at 95

Zhu Senlin, a former Guangdong governor widely regarded as a key enforcer of the province’s economic transformation in China’s critical period of opening up in the 1990s, died on Monday aged 95, according to official media.Nanfang Daily, the mouthpiece of the Guangdong-party-committee" class="entity-link entity-organization" data-entity-id="182721" data-entity-type="organization">Guangdong party committee, confirmed on Tuesday that Zhu had died due to illness.Shanghai-born Zhu spent more than five decades in the southern province that neighbours Hong Kong.Former Guangdong governor Zhu Senlin instituted China’s first “honorary citizen” award in Guangzhou in 1986 in a bid to recognise the vital role of overseas Chinese, a move later replicated elsewhere in China. Photo: SCMPHe is widely remembered as a pragmatic, steady administrator who steered Guangdong through the most critical two decades of China’s reform and opening-up era – first as mayor and party chief of Guangzhou in the 1980s, and later as governor of Guangdong from May 1991 to February 1996. He took over as governor from Ye Xuanping, the eldest son of marshal Ye Jianying.