Lu Lei has been appointed as a deputy governor of China’s People’s Bank of China (PBOC), the third senior official to join the central bank since July, according to a Bloomberg report. He replaces Liu Guoqiang, who served in the role since 2018 and retired at 60 this June. Lu’s diverse career includes experiences at the PBOC, academia, and China Merchants Bank. He worked under the respected former PBOC governor Zhou Xiaochuan in the 1990s and rejoined the PBOC in 2014, holding key positions in its research and financial stability bureaus. In 2017, he became a deputy administrator of the State Administration of Foreign Exchange. Lu earned a PhD in economics from the Graduate School of the People’s Bank of China and has international experience from his time in Australia.