China Mobile, the world's largest telecom operator by number of subscribers, announced on Monday that Shang Bing has replaced Xi Guohua as board chairman.

Shang, 60, worked as senior manager for China Unicom and China Telecom before becoming vice head of China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in 2011.

Xi, 64, has retired from the telecom giant.

China Mobile raked in 57.3 billion yuan (about 9 billion U.S. dollars) in net profits in the first half of 2015 with more than 810 million subscribers.