Beijing - If any of China's leaders is seen on global television more often than President Hu Jintao during the Olympics, it is likely to be Xi Jinping, the man seen as Hu's successor as Communist Party leader in 2012 and state president in 2013. Xi, 55, was handed the reins of coordinating the final Olympic preparations early this year. That move was seen as a test of his leadership qualities both within China and on the international stage, following his elevation in October to the elite nine-member Standing Committee of the party's Politburo.
Xi's wife, the popular People's Liberation Army singer Peng Liyuan, was better known to ordinary Chinese until his elevation to the party's top echelon last year.
Xi now heads a three-person lead group for the Olympics, aided by security specialist Zhou Yongkang and Liu Qi, who led Beijing's preparations from the bidding stage.
Liu set up the Beijing Olympic organizing committee in 2001, expanding its full-time staff to 4,000 and recruiting thousands of volunteers.
He won praise from the party and the International Olympic Committee, overseeing the creation of spectacular venues like the "Bird's Nest" Olympic stadium and the "Water Cube" aquatics centre, and taking on the unenviable task of trying to make Beijing's polluted air suitable for athletes to breathe.
Xi served as the party leader of Shanghai last year after his predecessor, expelled Politburo member Chen Liangyu, was deposed amid a politically tainted corruption scandal.
He previously led the nearby eastern province of Zhejiang for five years.
"He is said to have contributed significantly to the development of the area's privately owned enterprises and is also well-known for his tough stance on corruption," an official biography said of his time in Zhejiang.
Xi rose through the Communist Youth League. He studied chemical engineering in Beijing and later gained degrees in social sciences and law, according to his official biography.
He is the son of Xi Zhongxun, a celebrated leader of communist guerrillas in northern China who was purged several times during the 1966-1976 Cultural Revolution.
The elder Xi helped to develop China's "special economic zones" in the 1980s and opposed the 1989 military crackdown on pro-democracy protesters.
A few Western analysts have speculated that, once he takes power, Xi could gradually introduce long-awaited legal and democratic reforms in the one-party state. Those hopes appear to be based largely on his father's liberalism.
Singapore's elder statesman Lee Kuan Yew made a far-fetched comparison between Xi and and South African Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela after he met the Chinese leader late last year, describing him as "a thoughtful man who has gone through many trials and tribulations".
Lee pointed out that Xi, like most educated youths of his generation, was sent to labour on a communal farm in the poor countryside of Shaanxi province in northern China. One of his sisters was reportedly killed during the Cultural Revolution.
But the young Xi was not imprisoned and appears to have thrived in a Communist Party then dominated by factions of fanatical young Red Guards.
He became the party chief of a village at just 21 years old and was later recommended by the party for a place at one of China's top universities.
In June 1989, he was the party secretary of Nengde prefecture in the south-eastern province of Fujian, according to his official biography.
Nengde authorities disbanded the local branch of the Chinese People's Democratic Party in June 1989, sentencing its leader to 18 years in prison for "organizing and leading a counter-revolutionary group", according to the US-based Dui Hua Foundation.
Xi won his promotions "by anticipating what his elders want", John Tkacik, a retired US diplomat who met Xi several times while working in China, wrote in the Wall Street Journal in October.
"Intellectually curious as he is, he is fundamentally an organization man," Tkacik said.
Some of Xi's recent speeches appear to back Tkacik's analysis, reflecting a bureaucratic approach and suggesting that those who see Xi as a potential supporter of democratic reform could be wrong.
State media said Xi praised Hu Jintao's report at the five-yearly congress of the Communist Party in October as reflecting the "latest achievements of the Sinification of Marxism".
After mountaineers carried the Olympic flame to the summit of Mount Everest in Tibet in May, Xi issued a clarion call to everyone involved in the Olympics via a telegram of congratulation read on state television.
"I hope that all the comrades who take part in and organize the Beijing Olympics, under the central party leadership with comrade Hu Jintao as the general secretary, will hold high the great banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics," Xi said.
