China's Minister of Environmental Protection Chen Jining was appointed acting mayor of Beijing Saturday.

The appointment was made at a meeting of the Standing Committee of the Beijing Municipal People's Congress.

The meeting also accepted the resignation of Cai Qi as mayor of Beijing.

Cai was appointed to the post of the secretary of the Beijing Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), the CPC Central Committee announced on May 27.

Chen, 53, is an environmental scientist by training. He received his Ph.D degree from Imperial College London, where he worked as a research associate before returning to teach at his alma mater Tsinghua University in 1998.

Chen climbed the career ladder at Tsinghua, where he became president before being appointed to head the Ministry of Environmental Protection in 2015.