Lou Jiwei

At the first plenary session of the 12th National People's Congress in March 2013, Lou Jiwei was elected as Minister for Finance, succeeding Xie Xuren. On 7 November 2016, Lou was replaced by Xiao Jie after confirmation in the National People's Congress Standing Committee.

In 2008, Time magazine considered Lou one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Forbes Magazine considered him to be the 30th most powerful person in the world, according to their "Powerful People 2010" List. In 2011 he was included in the 50 Most Influential ranking of Bloomberg Markets Magazine. Jiwei was listed as twelfth on aiCIO's 2012 list of the 100 most influential institutional investors worldwide.

In 2007, he served briefly as deputy secretary general of the State Council and became an alternate member of the 17th CPC Central Committee.

After post graduate studies Lou worked as the deputy head of the financial and banking office group of the general office of the State Council. During the mid-1980s Lou went to work as the director of the Institute of Finance and Trade of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. In 1995 Lou became the vice-governor of Guizhou Province and shortly thereafter became the vice-minister of finance. In 1999 he became a member of the academic affairs committee of the State Council.

Lou is a native of Yiwu, Zhejiang province. He was born in 1950, joined the Communist Party of China in 1973, studied in the computer sciences faculty of Tsinghua University in 1978, and did postgraduate work with the econometrics faculty of the Postgraduate School of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 1982.