Ma Kai
Ma Kai was appointed state councilor and secretary general of the State Council in March 2008. A pricing policy expert, Ma is also a member of the 17th Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Central Committee.
Ma was born in 1946 in Xingxian, Shanxi, where his father, Ma Mingfang, was a deputy political commissar. Ma Mingfang had a long and illustrious career, including a stint as minister of Finance and Trade, and Ma Kai grew up among China's top leaders and their children.
Ma joined the CCP in 1965 and taught at the Beijing No. 4 Middle School and then at the party school of the Beijing Xicheng District Committee. In 1982, he received a Master's degree from the department of political economy of People's University in Beijing.
In the 1980s, he served as a researcher at the State Council's Price Research Center, deputy head of Beijing's Xicheng District and director of the district's planning commission, deputy director of the Beijing Office of Restructuring the Economy, and director of the Beijing Bureau of Commodity Prices. In 1989, he was named deputy director of the State Administration of Commodity Prices.
From 1993 to 1995 Ma served as vice minister of the State Commission for Restructuring the Economy. From 1995 to 1998, he was vice minister of the State Planning Commission.
In 1998, Ma was appointed one of three State Council deputy secretaries-general, a position he held until 2003, and during which he was responsible for disaster and flood relief operations, environmental protection, and day-to-day economic work issues. He was a member of the 16th CCP Central Committee and was appointed director of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) in March 2003. Ma was NDRC director until March 2008, when he was appointed to his new State Council posts.