A look at Xi Jinping, the man tipped to be China's next leader

The most powerful man in China's political system, President Hu Jintao, will step down on Thursday in a much anticipated ritual that will announce who will be guiding the world's most populous country into the immediate future.      

Selected to the Politburo Standing Committee five years ago, Xi Jinping has been respecting his position as 6th most senior member, as can be seen when he waits for his five senior peers to walk by before taking his place in the line to walk off the podium.       

But this Thursday, when the Politburo selects a new Standing Committee, Xi's time will almost certainly come.      

At the selection in 2007, Xi was ranked high enough, making him the most likely candidate for leading both the Party and the government in the next generational handover.If there are no last-minute surprises Xi will be chosen as the Party chief, but he won't be assuming the presidency of China until next spring.     

Xi has an elite, educated background as the son of Xi Zhongxun, one of the early revolutionary leaders and one of the main supporters of economic reforms after Mao Zedong's death. But at the same time he has successfully cultivated a common man mystique that helps him appeal to a broad constituency. He spent seven years in the remote northern community of Liangjiahe, in Shaanxi province, toiling alongside villagers by day and sleeping on bricks by night, in stark contrast to his pampered early years in Beijing.    

As the son of a one-time Vice Premier, the younger Xi spent the 1950s in a world of comfortable homes, chauffeur-driven cars and the best schools when most Chinese were desperately poor. But the elder Xi fell afoul of the increasingly paranoid communist chief, and Chairman Mao demoted him in 1962. The son was dispatched to rural Shaanxi province in 1969 as part of Mao's campaign to toughen up educated urban youth during the chaotic Cultural Revolution.     

The Liangjiahe years are among the scant details known about Xi's life and personality partly because he himself chronicled them as a formative experience. However, he did not at first come willingly to Liangjiahe, a tiny community of cave dwellings dug into arid hills and fronted by dried mud walls with wooden lattice entryways. He tried to escape and was detained and sent to a labor camp for six months.    

Rejected for Communist Party membership nine times due to his father's political problems, Xi finally gained entry in 1974 and then attended the elite Tsinghua University. Xi went on to earn a chemistry degree, by which time Mao had died and his father had been restored to office. Xi next secured a top position as secretary to Defense Minister Geng Biao, one of his father's old comrades.     

With help from his father, Xi jumped in 1985 to a vice mayorship in the port of Xiamen, then at the forefront of economic reforms. He later took the top position in neighboring Zhejiang province, a hotbed of private industry, a lively civil society, non-communist candidates for local assemblies and a thriving underground church movement.      

After a brief spell in charge of Shanghai, Xi was brought to Beijing and handed the high-profile task of overseeing the 2008 Beijing Olympics.

He toured many provinces, including the highly volatile Tibetan region, and often traveled overseas representing the country. But it's what lies ahead that may give Xi a chapter in the modern history of the world's second largest economy.     

If elected president, Xi will be faced with daunting challenges. After two decades of fast-paced growth and social change, the economy is flagging and China is under strain.      Rampant corruption is corroding already low reserves of public trust in officialdom. Beyond home, China is locked in conflict over territory with Japan and Southeast Asian neighbors. At the same time the US is shoring up ties with countries on China's edge.        

The 59-year-old has a daughter at Harvard University under an assumed name, though Xi has signalled he may be a staunch Chinese nationalist.        

"There are some bored foreigners with full stomachs, who have nothing better to do than try to point fingers at our country," Xi told a meeting of overseas Chinese expatiators in Mexico City, during a Central American tour in 2009.        

Evidence of a strong nationalist streak also emerged again last month when he lectured US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on China's claim to East China Sea islands held by Japan.   

But Xi's greatest asset resides in him being a consensus candidate that is not identified with any faction in particular. Indeed when people on Beijing's streets are asked he seems like many different things to many different people.

In the eyes of the greater public, a great source of popularity derives from his wife, Peng Liyuan. A glamorous folk singer in the military, she has performed at many of the country's main celebrations, including the official state broadcaster's annual Chinese New Year gala. Although her profile has been lowered since Xi has been anointed as China's next leader in waiting, she still appears on screen in official campaigns to raise Aids awareness.


APTN