President Jintao Hu of China
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His mother died when Hu was only seven years old, and the boy was raised by his aunt.
Hu is said to have enjoyed ballroom dancing, singing, and table tennis in university.
In 1964, Hu joined the Chinese Communist Party, just as the Cultural Revolution was being born.
Hu remained politically active during this time, working his way up within the hierarchy of the Ministry of Water Conservancy and Power.
The following year, Hu was transferred to Beijing and appointed to the secretariat of the Communist Youth League Central Committee.
In 1988, Hu was promoted once more to Party Chief of the restive Tibet Autonomous Region.
Tibetans were less charmed, especially after rumors flew that Hu was implicated in the sudden death of the 51-year-old Panchen Lama that same year.
As a result, the 49-year-old Hu was approved as one of seven members of the Politburo Standing Committee.
In 1993, Hu was confirmed as heir apparent to Jiang Zemin, with appointments as the leader of the Secretariat of the Central Committee and the Central Party School.
Hu has instead shown himself to be a hard-liner in many respects.
Secretary-General Hu was particularly worried about the people in flood storage areas and made a special visit to Zhengtaizi, Licheng Village, Wangjiaba Town, Funan County.
Secretary-General Hu took the deposit book and read it.
Hu has made his trips in the footsteps of Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, who has traveled to the earthquake region a half-dozen times and whose popularity has grown because of the visits.
Hu said China would base its human rights development on the basic situation of the country, Xinhua news agency said, a caveat used by China to apply its own human rights standards.
My visit is aimed at increasing friendship and co-operation between our two nations, and working together with our Cuban comrades to build a promising future, Mr Hu said in a statement.
Farmers will be allowed to transfer land contract and management rights by various means, in accordance with their will, Hu was quoted by the official Xinhua news agency as saying during a visit to Anhui province.
Hu is seen by many as the ultimate insider in Chinese politics--someone completely indoctrinated by the Chinese educational system who never studied overseas and afterward never took any risks that might endanger his career--and may not understand politics outside China or East Asia well.
1993-2002: Hu was concurrently president of the Party School of the CPC Central Committee, which has been the training base for senior CPC cadres and backbones of theoretical studies over the past 70 years.
Although Jiang, then 76, stepped down from the powerful Politburo Standing Committee to make way for a younger fourth generation of leadership, there was speculation that Jiang would retain significant influence because Hu is not associated with Jiang's influential Shanghai clique, to which six out of the nine members of the all-powerful Standing Committee were believed to be linked.
Although many believe Hu was originally hand-picked by Deng as the youngest member of China's top leadership and a leading candidate to succeed Jiang, he had exercised a great deal of political skills between 1992 and 2002 to consolidate his position, and eventually emerged as Jiang's heir apparent in his own right.
Since then Hu has officially taken on the three institutions in the People's Republic of China where power lie, the state, the party, as well as the military, thus informally, has become the paramount leader.
Officially, Hu has been promoting Jiang's legacy by beginning a mass campaign in August 2006 promoting the Selected Works of Jiang Zemin, a collection of speeches and essays documenting Jiang's philosophies.
Hu had corruption charges brought against Shanghai's leader to get rid of Jiang's man.
At the 11th National People's Congress, Hu was re-elected as President on 15 March 2008.
What emerges in the view of President Hu is the "China Model," a systematic approach to national structure and development that combines dynamic economic growth, a free market energized by a vigorous “nonpublic” (i.
In foreign policy, Hu has focused on moving away from a Jiang's US.
In addition, Hu has sought to strengthen ties with resource-based countries such as Brazil and Pakistan and focused on increasing China's influence in Africa, pledging aid and skilled workers to poor African nations.
Despite initial expectations that Hu was a "closet liberal", Hu has shown a fairly hard-line approach to liberalisation of the media.
Hu has been very cautious with regards to the Internet, choosing to censor politically sensitive material to a degree more strict than the Jiang era.
On the one hand, Hu expressed a flexibility to negotiate on many issues of concern to Taiwan.
8 A lot of Asians adopt English names.
25 "Lately, Hu has shown his true colors, bringing out Maoist idology and Cultursal Revolution jargon.
China has a history of fallen heirs-apparent, which many observers believe explains Hu's characteristic caution.
Some of the stuff Hu has been doing hasnt been very democratic.
It remains to be seen if Hu is capable of managing the continued peaceful development of China without provoking international incident, while at the same time presiding over a unprecedented increase in Chinese nationalist sentiment.
Contrast this to John Evander Couey.
Hu is a surname, not a given name.
Hu is the centerpiece of the bureaucratic machine of the Chinese Communist Party but by no means its absolute dictator.
Hu was a pragmatist and hard-liner as far as any effort of political reform is concerned.
Currently the page says Hu was born in Jixi, Anhui.
Therefore, it is very likely that Hu is officially an atheist.
I don't blieve Hu is a compeletly innocent politicor.
Hu is a member of the so-called fourth generation of Chinese Communist leadership.
According to his official biography, Hu was born in Jixi County, in the province of Anhui in eastern China.
In 1985 Hu was appointed secretary of the Communist Party in the province of Guizhou, one of the poorest in China.
In March 2003 Hu took on the ceremonial post of state president.
Hu was reappointed president in 2007 by a congress of the Chinese Communist Party.
In 1992, 49-year-old Hu was elected member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee at the First Plenum of the 14th CPC Central Committee, which was then widely considered as an important step the CPC had taken toward generational transition of the central leadership.
From 1993 to the end of 2002, Hu was concurrently president of the Party School of the CPC Central Committee, which has been the training base for senior CPC cadres and backbones of theoretical studies over the past 70 years.
In September 1997, Hu was re-elected member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee at the First Plenum of the 15th CPC Central Committee.
In November 2002, Hu was elected general secretary of the CPC Central Committee at the 16th National Congress of the CPC.
In March 2003, Hu was duly elected as President of the People's Republic of China.
As a part of this family concern, Hu's father's business was centered in and around Shanghai, where Hu was born in December 1942.
The usual level of corruption and excess at this level would have been even more extremely offensive in Guizhou, China's poorest region, and Hu is reported to have "lived modestly" although reading between the lines this seems to have been mostly achieved by not moving his family to the area, which local cadres took as a bit of a snub.
gnolia SphereStumbleUponCLOSEThe Chinese political system is so opaque that when Hu was named general secretary of China's Communist Party in November, no one could be certain that he was actually running the country (even though the job is supposed to be the most powerful one in China.
When the 60-year-old Hu took control last fall, the most noteworthy thing about him was how little was known about him despite his long tenure as the chosen successor to Jiang Zemin.
placeAd2(commercialNode,'midarticleflex',false,'')Hu is still something of a mystery man, but one of the most interesting things about his tenure so far is how he has continued to be deferential, for a Communist, at least.
Some argue that Hu is bending to international opinion, rather than Chinese public opinion.
Mr Hu was welcomed by the Chairman and CEO of Time Warner, Richard Parsons.
As China's leader, Hu has emphasized achieving sustainable economic growth that benefits rural as well as urban areas.
Since his ascendancy Hu has reinstated certain controls on the economy and has been largely conservative with political reforms.
Hu was a talented student in high school, excelling in activities such as singing and dancing.
In 1964, while still a student at Beijing's Tsinghua University, Hu joined the Communist Party of China, prior to the Cultural Revolution.
At Tsinghua University Hu met a fellow student Liu Yongqing, now his wife.
In 1974, Hu was transferred to the Construction Department of Gansu as a secretary.
In 1982, Hu was promoted to the position of Communist Youth League Gansu Branch Secretary.
With the support of Hu Yaobang and Deng Xiaoping, Hu was assured of a bright future in the party.
Two years later Hu was promoted to First Secretary of CY Central, thus its actual leader.
Soon afterward, on 28 January 1989, the revered Panchen Lama died, an event in which many Tibetans believe Hu was involved.
In 1993, Hu took charge of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee, which oversaw day-to-day operations of the Central Committee, and the Central Party School, which was convenient for him to bring up his own supporters among senior CPC cadres.
Hu was also put in charge of the ideological work of the CPC.
Although Hu was considered heir apparent to Jiang, he always took great care to ensure that Jiang be at the center of the spotlight.
Hu said the 17th CPC National Congress, which closed Sunday, was "a resounding success.
Hu said the CPC Central Committee just held its first plenary session and elected the new central leading organs.
Hu said that Xi, 54, and Li, 52, are relatively young.
elected as Chairman of the People's Republic of China March, 2003.
Hu joined the CPC in April 1964 and entered the workforce in July 1965.
According to official biographies, Hu was born in eastern Anhui province, although there is some uncertainty about his actual birthplace.
Some commentators believe that Hu was born in Taizhou, Jiangsu - not in Jixi, Anhui as reported.
Hu joined the Communist Party prior to the Cultural Revolution in 1964 while still a student at Beijing's Tsingha University.
Although Jiang Zemin, then 76, stepped down from the powerful Politburo Standing Committee to make way for a younger Generations of Chinese leadership|fourth generation of leadership led by Hu, there was speculation that Jiang Zemin would retain significant power because Hu is not associated with Jiang's Shanghai clique, to which six out of the nine new members of the all-powerful Standing Committee are linked.
Furthermore the Chinese leadership under Hu has also focused on such problems as the gap between rich and poor and uneven development between the interior and coastal regions.
At the same time, Hu has contradicted some initial expectations that he was a closet liberal.
Furthermore, while Hu has attempted to make decision making more transparent and to increase rule of law he has also explicitly stated that his goal is to strengthen and make the party more efficient rather than weaken the party or move toward a pluralistic political system.
engineering at Qinghua University.
At almost 60, Hu is still one of the youngest leaders Communist China has ever had, and he likely has quite a few more years at the top of China's hierarchy.
Hu is a trained engineer and a savvy party politician with leadership experience both in the provinces as well as in Beijing.
Hu was said to appear ill at ease in the role as he read from a prepared text.
A handsome and personable young man, Hu was identified by the school party organization as having leadership potential and sympathy with communist ideology; by his sophomore year, he had been designated a "prospective party member.
Hu was appointed as a researcher at Tsinghua University and political instructor for the school's party organization.
At Tsinghua University, Hu met an attractive young woman named Liu Yongqing, whom he married after a long courtship.
One source says that Hu had asked to be sent to work on "Third Line" construction projects in the countryside and that he chose the Gansu Liujiaxia Power Station project because it suited his academic training.
In 1969, after a year of hod-carrying in Gansu, Hu was assigned to "813 Branch of the Number Four Engineering Bureau" to work on a local project managed by the central government's Ministry of Water Resources and Electric Power.
Hu had visited every part of the province during his 12 years there and reputedly knew the counties and their problems by heart.
Song was quite a string-puller because in 1982, at the age of 39, Hu was selected as an alternate member to the 12th CCP Central Committee.
It was unsurprising, then, that later in the year Hu was promoted to Secretary of the Gansu Provincial Committee of the CYL.
And it was even less surprising that within months Hu had been transferred to Beijing where he joined the Secretariat of the Central Committee of the CYL and became president of the All-China Youth Federation.
By November 1984, Hu was head of the CYL Secretariat, the top post of China's largest youth organization.
His wife, by the way, apparently worked at the CYL National Committee's "Chinese Youth Travel Agency" when Hu was transferred to Beijing in 1982, but was later transferred to the Beijing Municipal Construction Commission to avoid suspicions of nepotism.
Hu had established himself as an effective reformist leader in a poverty-stricken province.
Although Hu was reappointed as Guizhou party chief in August 1988, Hu's mentor in Beijing, Song Ping, let him know that the party was looking for a new man for the top party spot in Tibet.
From the beginning of the crisis, Hu had coordinated with the Chengdu Military Region command to move as many as seventeen divisions, or about 170,000 men, into Tibet.
By March 10, the situation in Lhasa was reported normal, but Hu was not able to attend the National People's Congress session in Beijing on March 14, citing continuing tensions on the Tibetan Plateau.
Aside from appearing at several conferences in the Tibetan region, Hu had little in the way of constructive accomplishments during his tenure.
Moreover, Hu had lived three years in the 4,000-foot high capital of Guizhou.
Although Hu remained on the books as Tibet party chief, he spent most of the next two years in Beijing as de facto executive director of the Communist Party's all-powerful Organization Department under mentor Song Ping.
As the Politburo member charged with overseeing personnel and propaganda, Hu was tasked with difficult cadre policy problems particularly those touching the perquisites of senior cadres.
Hu has the best power network in the country.
This clearly was a signal to the party that Hu was numbered among the party's reformists.
But lest the party misapprehend that Hu was good at "quelling turmoil," Jiang quickly added that former Premier Li Peng--roundly viewed as the top civilian urging the armed suppression of the democracy movement at Tiananmen in 1989--was named to chair China's National People's Congress because "Li Peng is a leader good at quelling turmoils.
Jiang explained that while Hu was good at overcoming the "left" (i.
Mindful of his experience in 1982 at the CYL, Hu was well aware of the dangers of another nationwide campaign to attack "bourgeois liberalism" and sought to defuse the issue.
The report noted that Hu has gathered his own team to oversee China's relations with the United States which is headed by Zheng Bijian, vice president of the Central Party School, and Zhan Qizheng, director of the State Council Information Office.
37 And most analysts saw Hu Jintao's attendance at Vice Premier Qian Qichen's January 24, 2002, speech on Taiwan policy an indication that Hu has also inserted himself into the development of cross-Strait relations.
As President of China, Hu has tried to balance the driving direction of the country from "GDP first and welfare second," to a more moderate, gradual, approach to development.
NPR: China's President Hu Jintao to Talk Business in US.
Competition within the Chinese leadership and a distrust of one-man rule have meant that Hu has had to lead by consensus.
Someone who was more overtly ambitious might have lost his cool over challenges, but Hu has managed to convey an air of composure, the better to maintain a semblance of accord between fractious leaders.
In reality, the way Hu has negotiated a difficult situation says much about him as a person and about his evolving and distinctive political philosophy.
Even though China's revolutionaries spent decades trying to expunge "feudal" culture, Hu has ended up as something of a closet traditionalist whose sense of a political true north derives as much from the Chinese classics, to which he has turned in search of models of concord, as it does from Mao and Marx.
When once asked by an overseas journalist why he chose to remain so enigmatic, Hu said simply, "It's not fair to call me mysterious.
Hu says he'll help US grow richer, and he follows through on his promises," says Lu, who was impressedeven though "my dumplings looked nicer.
Picked for the Central Committee's Political Bureau in 1992 by Deng Xiaoping, Hu was the first modern Chinese leader to start his political career after the 1949 communist revolution.
The same year Hu was named General Secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee.
Since taking office as president, Hu has taken charge of the China's military and reached out diplomatically to countries around the world.
By training, Hu is a hydraulics engineer.
In contrast to the members of the "Shanghai clique", Hu has spent most of his career in China's poorer hinterland rather than in the economically prosperous coastal regions.
In his 50s, Hu was by far the youngest member of the then seven-member Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China.
Hu has focused on sectors of the Chinese population that have been left behind by the economic reform, and has taken a number of high profile trips to the poorer areas of China with the stated goal of understanding these areas better.
Many observers see the Central Government's handling of the situation as characteristic of Hu's quiet style, and unlike Chief Executive Tung Chee-Hwa, Hu remains a popular figure in Hong Kong.
Although Jiang Zemin, 76, stepped down from the powerful Politburo Standing Committee to make way for a younger "fourth generation" of leadership led by Hu, there was speculation that Jiang Zemin would retain significant power because Hu is not associated with Jiang's "Shanghai clique", to which six out of the nine new members of the all-powerful Standing Committee are linked.