Dark horse Xi raised to senior position

By Ben Blanchard

BEIJING (Reuters) - Married to a famous singer and in charge of China's richest and most glamorous city, troubleshooting Shanghai Communist Party boss Xi Jinping has emerged as a possible successor to President Hu Jintao.

Picked not once but twice to bring a troublesome part of the country under control, Xi on Monday was promoted to the all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee at the end of a key Party Congress.

President Hu Jintao singled him out, along with another rising star, Liaoning Party boss Li Keqiang, as a "young comrade" in unveiling the new line-up to the world's media.

Xi was promoted to governor of the southeastern province of Fujian in August 1999 after a string of provincial officials were caught up in a graft dragnet.

And in March this year, the portly Xi secured the top job in China's commercial capital after his predecessor, Chen Liangyu, was caught up in a huge corruption case that has implicated more than a dozen senior city officials and businessmen.

Xi shot to national fame in the early 1980s as Party boss of a rural county in Hebei province, which surrounds Beijing. He had rare access to then national Party chief Hu Yaobang in the leadership compound, Zhongnanhai, west of the Forbidden City.

He moved on to Fujian, a strategic province lying across the strait from democratic and self-ruled Taiwan, in 1985.

Xi, 54, is the son of former reformist vice premier and parliament vice-chairman Xi Zhongxun, making him a "princeling" -- one of the privileged sons and daughters of China's incumbent, retired or late leaders.

A native of the poor, inland province of Shaanxi, home of the terracotta warriors, Xi graduated in engineering from Beijing's elite Tsinghua University, which educated many top leaders, including Party boss Hu Jintao. Xi also has a doctorate in law.

SIMPLE LIFE

Xi is married to Peng Liyuan, a renowned singer who is arguably more popular in China than her husband.

"He's the best," Peng gushed in an interview with a state-run magazine earlier this year, describing him as frugal, hardworking and down-to-earth.

"When he comes home, I've never thought of it as though there's some leader in the house. In my eyes, he's just my husband. When I get home, he doesn't think of me as some famous star. In his eyes, I'm simply his wife," she added.

Xi was transferred in 2002 to the affluent, freewheeling eastern province of Zhejiang, where the economy is overwhelmingly dominated by private business.

Considered a reformer and pro-business, he is regarded as a friend by U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, who has described him as "the kind of guy who knows how to get things over the goal line".