Barring a major reversal of fortune, the future leadership of the last major state ruled by a Communist party is set until 2022 and the man who will head the ruling group in the Zhongnanhai leadership compound, beside the Forbidden City, for ten years from 2012 is a stockily built, 57-year-old apparatchik who comes from a group of senior figures in their fifties known as the "princelings" — whose fathers pioneered the People's Republic.
Xi Jinping has emerged stage by stage since 2007 as the heir apparent when the incumbent, Hu Jintao, ends his ten-year term in 2012. Xi's rise to the top was apparently sealed when a Communist party central committee plenum appointed him vice-chair of the military affairs committee, which oversees China's forces.
The appointment means that Xi is perfectly placed to take on the Top Three jobs of secretary of the Communist party, state president and civilian head of the military. Like Hu, he will often be referred to outside China as "President Xi". But the Communist party post is much more important: China is still a Leninist state in which the party rules over the government. He has a reputation as a conciliator, a man who gets on with those around him. Chubby-faced, he smiles more often in public than the grave Hu and there are reports of a periodic twinkle of amusement in his eye.
For many years, his wife, Peng Liyuan, a celebrated folk singer, was better known than him. They have four children and a rare informal photograph showed them standing smiling by a rock pool in a traditional Chinese garden. Since her husband rose to the top, Peng Liyuan has stopped performing, observing the convention that the wives of Chinese leaders stay in the background.
Xi's appointment to the military commission completed a process begun at the last party congresses in 2007, which elected him to the supreme decision-making body, the standing committee of the politburo. He came in one place ahead of the man regarded as Hu Jintao's chosen successor, Li Keqiang. Xi was then appointed vice-president while Li became senior vice-premier and therefore the putative prime minister in the leadership changes due in 2012-13.
It was all very neat as the elite sought to avoid one of the pitfalls of one-party states, the succession issue that can lead to running warfare between rival contenders as happened after the death of Mao Zedong. But we have little idea of how Xi was chosen. It appears that he was the most broadly acceptable member of the new fifth generation of Chinese leaders, not just to the present standing committee but to big business, entrenched interest groups and the former party chief, Jiang Zemin.
The man who will sit at the top of the power structure ruling 1.3 billion people in the world's second-biggest economy was born in June, 1953, a native of Shaanxi province, a poor region of northwestern China. His father, Xi Zhongxun, a long-time Communist, was deputy prime minister from 1959 to 1962 but fell foul of the Cultural Revolution started by Mao Zedong in 1966.
But this did not stop his son's rise. After finally gaining party membership in 1974, Xi Jinping studied at a top Beijing university, majoring in Marxist theory and ideological education. After doing a course in chemical engineering, he went to work in the general office of the state council.
He worked his way up the party ranks in central China and went on to more senior jobs in Fujian province on the east coast.
Fighting corruption
From there, he transferred to the neighbouring province of Zhenjiang a hive of private manufacturing enterprises, where he worked with business and gained a reputation for fighting corruption. In 2007, he was catapulted to the mega-city of Shanghai, after the party secretary there was ousted in a major political-corruption scandal.
Xi's feet hardly had time to touch the ground before he was elevated to the politburo standing committee in 2007 and moved to Beijing. He was given political responsibility for the 2008 Beijing Olympics and for supervising Hong Kong, along with being entrusted with the politically important job of president of the party school, the highest institution training officials of the Communist party.
As president-in-waiting, he has visited Australia, Germany, Japan and the Americas. According to people who met him on these trips, he was polished, interested in what he was shown and generally affable.
However, in Mexico last year, he lashed out at "a few foreigners, with full bellies, who have nothing better to do than try to point fingers at our country. China does not export revolution, hunger or poverty; nor does China cause you any headaches. What else do you want?"
That kind of sentiment chimes with the widespread pride felt in China at the economic record of the past three decades and the way the government's 1.2 trillion rescue package has restored growth to 10 per cent. But the new fifth generation of leaders will still have to grapple with huge remaining problems, such as the need to find a more sustainable economic growth model, the wealth disparities, ecological devastation, corruption and the fundamental political question of whether the Communist party can maintain its grip on power or whether political and legal reform is required if China is to live up to its potential. Little is known of how Xi would deal with such issues. Contrary to the belief that economic liberalisation would lead to political liberalisation, a desire to preserve the privileges they have gained from growth may incline the elite and the middle class towards self-defensive conservativism. If Xi is a spokesperson for this group, he has shown no sign of being ready to loosen the reins.
If his succession in 2012 does not appear in doubt, what nobody knows is how Xi will use his power. It may be that China's consensual leadership means it does not make a lot of difference who sits at the top of the party. The country is run by managers trying to deal with challenges in a changing world. Xi Jinping is as good a symbol as any of the China of the coming decade.
