China appoints new top official for scandal-ridden Chongqing

As head of the sprawling Chongqing, left reeling in the wake of a corruption and murder scandal involving Bo, Sun will have to deal with the legacy of Bo, the former high-flyer at the centre of China's biggest political scandal in decades.

Sun's appointment was announced in a brief statement carried by the official Xinhua news agency on Tuesday.

Bo was fired in March following his wife's implication in a murder, and Chongqing had been run in the interim by Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang. Zhang was promoted last week to the party's inner core of power, the seven-man Politburo Standing Committee.

Reuters reported earlier this month that Sun, 49, a former agriculture minister and then party boss of the northeastern province of Jilin, had been tipped to get the job.

Sun is emblematic of younger officials of humbler backgrounds who stand apart from the refined, urban backgrounds of the likes of president-in-waiting Xi Jinping and other so-called princelings - the descendants of former senior revolutionary leaders.

Sun is an agricultural expert who once ran a fertiliser factory and spent much of his early professional life in a rural part of Beijing. He served as agriculture minister from 2006- 2009 after a surprisingly rapid promotion.

That set him up to take office in Jilin, the centre of China's corn belt,

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