Jiang Jiemin, former board chairman of the China National Petroleum Corporation (CNPC), has been appointed head of the State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), the commission announced on Monday.

Jiang resigned from the country's largest oil and gas company earlier this month after former SASAC leader Wang Yong was promoted to China's cabinet.

The 58-year-old became board chairman of the energy giant in 2007 after years of work in the oil industry and a tenure in northwest China's Qinghai Province as vice governor.

Under Jiang's leadership, the CNPC sped up its overseas expansion. The company has actively engaged in cooperation with foreign energy giants in order to tap resources overseas.

Jiang vowed in January that the amount of oil and gas produced overseas would account for 60 percent of the CNPC's total output by 2020.

The SASAC now regulates 116 centrally-administered state-owned enterprises and other non-financial state assets in critical industries such as telecommunications, petroleum and mining.

According to SASAC figures, 116 such enterprises raked in a total of 1.3 trillion yuan (207 billion U.S. dollars) in net profits in 2012, up 2.7 percent year on year. But the growth was slower than the 6.4-percent and 40.2-percent profit expansions recorded in 2011 and 2010, respectively.

Go to Forum >>0 Comment(s)