Low profile, solid steps

As the son of Xi Zhongxun, a Communist revolutionary hero and former vice-premier, Xi Jinping has, nevertheless, kept a low profile for decades.

He was sent to a remote mountain village in the northwestern province of Shaanxi when he was only 16 years old. He was soon elected the village's Party branch secretary because of his prestige among the local people and enthusiasm for work. He was later recommended for enrollment at Tsinghua University.

After graduation from the Chemical Engineering Department of Tsinghua in 1979, he became secretary to Geng Biao, the then vice-premier and minister of national defense. But three years later, he decided to give up the comfortable life in Beijing and go down to the grassroots to be trained.

In the following two decades, Xi started as deputy secretary of the Party committee in rural Zhengding county in Hebei province, and gained more and more work experience in the country's affluent coastal areas, including Fujian and Zhejiang provinces and Shanghai municipality.

'Do it now'

Officials in Fuzhou, capital of Fujian province, still remember Xi's order on working style in the 1990s when he worked as secretary of the city's Party committee: "Do it now".

Xi explained that this requires not only a high work efficiency but also the quickest response to problems emerging from fierce competition. "Do it now" soon became a common practice of Fuzhou officials.

Xi worked in Fujian for 17 years, serving as vice-mayor of Xiamen in the mid-1980s and ending up as provincial governor in the early part of this decade. During his tenure, Xi dedicated himself to building a service-oriented government, conserving the environment and resources, and promoting cooperation across the Taiwan Straits.