A committee (or "commission") is a type of small deliberative assembly that is usually intended to remain subordinate to another, larger deliberative assembly—which when organized so that action on committee requires a vote by all its entitled members, is called the "Committee of the Whole". Committees often serve several different functions:

A committee that is a subset of a larger committee is called a subcommittee.

Where the larger group has a name other than "committee" - for example, "Board" or "Commission", the smaller group(s) would usually be called committee(s), not subcommittee(s), and might go by an entirely different name, or substitute "Commission" for "Committee". For example in the sciences, the "International Commission on Stratigraphy" (ICS) a standing working committee is doing organizational work establishing uniform naming and benchmarks in the geologic record and timeline since 1974, all under the auspices of the International Union of Geological Sciences (IUGS). It is technically the "International Stratigraphy Committee" (ISC), which has limited executive committee powers to impanel other subcommittees (also called commissions) to resolve certain matters involving the Geologic time scale—its deliberations and those of its subcommittees must be adopted by the IUGS which meets in a committee-of-the-whole or Congress, every four years or so to deliberate on the subcommittee recommendations and officially adopt or not-adopt such.

Zhang Gaoli (Chinese: 张高丽; born in Jinjiang, Fujian in November 1946) is the current CPC Tianjin Committee Secretary. He was the Party Secretary in the economic sprawl of Shandong province until March 2007.

Zhang joined the CPC in November 1973, and he is an economist by profession. He was educated at Xiamen University in Xiamen from 1965 to 1970.

From 1997 to 2002 he held prominent leadership positions in the special economic zone of Shenzhen and the provincial government of Guangdong, and was instrumental in the economic development of region. An economic thinker, Zhang was then entrusted with the economic development of Shandong, where he was the first-in-charge CPC Shandong Committee Secretary.

Before the 17th Party Congress the central leadership moved Zhang in a provincial leadership reshuffle to lead the coastal city of Tianjin. He is believed to be an emerging member of the fifth generation of Chinese leadership.