— Politicarp, refWrite Frontpage politics newspotter, analyst, and columnist
BBC (Nov15,2k12)
China's ruling Communist Party has unveiled the next generation of leaders who will take charge of the country.
The seven men will sit at the top of the Politburo Standing Committee, China's most powerful body. They were elected by more than 2,000 delegates to a Party congress, though in practice their names had already been decided by a small group of Party elders.
The BBC news website profiles the men likely to lead China for the next decade.
Xi Jinping
Xi Jinping has become China's new Communist Party chief, and is now certain to take over next year as the country's President as well.
He is a so-called 'princeling', the privileged son of a former top leader, learning Chinese politics from an early age when his father was purged and he himself was sent to work in the countryside.
Mr Xi's close ties to the military and his support for state-owned industries suggest he's conservative.
Born in Beijing in 1953, Mr Xi studied chemical engineering in Tsinghua before joining the Party in 1974. He worked in Hebei, Fujian and Zhejiang, before being named Shanghai party chief in 2007 and tasked with cleaning up a corruption scandal.
He has a reputation for straight-talking, telling officials in 2004: 'Rein in your spouses, children, relatives, friends and staff, and vow not to use power for personal gain.'
To many inside China, Mr Xi is less famous than his wife - the folk singer Peng Liyuan.
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