Xi Jinping China's unknown next leader

When Xi Jinping, 59, and his "Fifth Generation" of leaders assume power, it will mark a first for China's post-1949 generation and those who spent their formative years during the Cultural Revolution. "Chinese leaders don't rise to the top telegraphing what changes they'll do," said Bruce J. Dickson, a political science professor at George Washington University's Elliott School of International Affairs. "They rise to the top showing how loyal they are to the incumbent. What they'll do when they rise to the top -- that's the big question." Read about what Xi Jinping faces Xi was born in 1953, four years after the Chinese Communist Party defeated the ruling Nationalists and established the People's Republic of China. He is the son of the second marriage of Xi Zhongxun, a revolutionary hero whom then-paramount leader Mao Zedong would appoint minister of propaganda and education. Xi Zhongxun would later become vice premier under Zhou Enlai and secretary general of the State Council, China's highest administrative body, before being purged in 1962.

However, a few years later, Xi -- his father by then deposed -- would be among 30 million "sent-down youth," forced to leave cities for the countryside and mountains under another of Mao's policies. From 1969-1975, or most of the Cultural Revolution, Xi was an agricultural laborer in Liangjiahe, Shaanxi, his ancestral province. "That generation went through a lot of difficulties," said Cheng Li, director of research at the John L. Thornton Center at the Brookings Institution. "Idealism and pragmatism in a very unique way combined in this generation."