Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping (57) has been appointed as vice-chairman of the Communist Party's military commission, strengthening his position to be the next leader of the world's most-populous nation.
Mr Xi was named to the commission, which controls the country's 2-million strong armed forces, at a meeting of the party's central committee in Beijing which ends today, the official Xinhua News Agency reported.
The title, bestowed upon President Hu Jintao in 1999 when he was vice-president, would enable Mr Xi to solidify ties with the People's Liberation Army ahead of a 2012 party congress that will choose the new leadership.
Mr Hu chairs the military commission and is party general secretary. "According to party tradition, Xi Jinping as the heir apparent, as the next general secretary, should be able to get on to the military commission at least two years before the change of power," said Willy Wo-Lap Lam, an adjunct professor of history at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.
China's leaders gathered behind closed doors at a Beijing hotel on Oct. 15 for a four-day meeting that was also called to discuss a new five-year economic plan for the world's second- biggest economy.
The central committee said China would continue boosting domestic demand to continue China's economic growth and to "actively participate" in global economic governance, Xinhua reported. China's economy expanded 10.3 per cent in the three months ending in June from a year earlier.
Consumption as a percentage of the economy is less than 40 per cent, compared to about 70 per cent in the US.
The party plenum was closed to foreign media. Security guards at the Jingxi Hotel wouldn't allow journalists to take pictures of the building on Oct. 15, saying it was a military district.
Rows of Audi A6 sedans were seen parked inside the hotel grounds. Many of China's biggest state-run companies and top bankers are represented in the central committee or its roster of alternate members, including China Construction Bank Chairman Guo Shuqing and PetroChina Co. Chairman Jiang Jiemin, according to a 2007 membership list.
As a vice chairman of the military commission, Mr Xi will have more say over the world's second-biggest defence budget after the US, according to figures compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
Mr Xi held a staff job in the People's Liberation Army in the early 1980s that included service at the commission, according to his official biography. Me Xi, the son of a former vice-premier, was previously party chief in eastern China's Zhejiang province and in neighboring Shanghai.
He was also in charge of organising the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing and last year's celebrations marking 60 years of Communist Party rule.
Mr Xi served as Shanghai's party secretary for a year after the previous incumbent,
Chen Liangyu, was fired and later imprisoned for 18 years for corruption. Mr Xi holds a doctorate in law and a chemical engineering degree from Beijing's Tsinghua University, Hu's alma mater, according to his biography.
He is married to a popular singer. 'Princeling' Chinese scholars refer to Xi as a "princeling" because he's the son of a prominent official. His father, Xi Zhongxun, who died in 2002, was responsible for making southern China's Guangdong province a centerpiece for economic opening in 1979. His recommendations were ratified at the time by paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, according to his official biography.
In 1980, China made the Guangdong fishing village of Shenzhen, which abuts Hong Kong, a special economic zone. It is now a Chicago-sized metropolis with a per-capita income of more than $10,000 a year. The elder Xi was a vice premier from 1959-62 before falling out of favor with Chairman Mao Zedong, who established the People's Republic of China in 1949.
Like many elite youths, Xi Jinping was sent to the countryside during China's 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution. "I ate a lot more bitterness than most people" during the Cultural Revolution, Xi said in a 1996 interview cited in China Parenting Magazine. In the interview, Mr Xi said he was imprisoned four times and called names such as "son of a bitch" and "reactionary student."
Bloomberg