(CNSPHOTO)

Xia Yong has been appointed as director of the upgraded National Administration for the Protection of State Secrets (NAPSS). The State Council announced the appointment on May 14.

The NAPSS was recently upgraded to a vice-ministerial agency of the State Council after China's top legislature amended the Law on Guarding State Secrets, in order to increase its authority to coordinate interdepartmental work in related fields.

Xia, 49, had served as chief of the former NPASS since 2005. A jurisconsult-turned-official, his efforts to promote the reduction of the number of state secrets and boost government transparency have won widespread praise.

Xia was deputy director of the Policy Research Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China before he moved to the NPASS. Before that, he taught for 12 years at the Southwest University of Political Science and Law between 1986 and 1998 and then worked at the Institute of Law of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences as its deputy director and director until 2004, mainly studying human rights and the rule of law.