Profile: Xi Jinping: Man of the people, statesman of vision

(Xinhua) Updated: 2012-12-24 10:11

File photo taken in December 2012 shows Xi Jinping has a lunch with soldiers during his inspection to the Guangzhou Military Region in south China. (Xinhua)

BEIJING, Dec 23 (Xinhua) -- It was a pleasant early December morning in a verdant park in Shenzhen, in South China's Guangdong province. Early risers, carrying on their usual morning exercise, did not expect to see a big name.

Related: Photo Special: Xi Jinping

The park was not cordoned. There was no red carpet nor were there people waving welcoming banners.

A middle-aged man in a dark suit, and a tieless white shirt, laid a wreath at the park's statue of the late Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping. Then he walked into the surrounding crowd and began a casual chat.

The visitor was Xi Jinping, the newly elected general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee.

During his visit to Guangdong, Xi called on the entire Party and people from all ethnic groups to unswervingly adhere to the path of reform and opening up and put greater focus on pursuing reform in a more systematic, integrated and coordinated way. Xi vowed no stop in reform, and no stop in opening up.

In his first visit outside Beijing as the top CPC leader, Xi went to Guangdong, the forefront of China's reform and opening up, following the route Deng had toured 20 years ago when the country was at a crossroad.

Media reports remarked that Xi is a leader who brings a fresh breeze to the country's political life, unswervingly pushes forward reform and opening up, and is beginning to lead the Chinese nation in realizing the China Dream.

Xi, 59, who was elected to his new role at the first plenum of the 18th CPC Central Committee on Nov. 15, is the first top Party leader born after 1949, the year the People's Republic of China (PRC) was founded.

He now leads the 91-year-old CPC, the world largest political party with more than 82 million members, as it rules China, the world's second largest economy.

The whole country and the world are putting their eyes on Xi:

- What will he do to lead the CPC to better serve the people?

- What will he do to lead China's 1.3 billion people to build a moderately prosperous society in all respects by the 100th anniversary of the founding of the CPC in 2021? Furthermore, what will he do to lead the people to achieve the goal of building an affluent, strong, democratic, civilized and harmonious modern socialist country by the time the PRC marks its centennial in 2049?

- What will he do to lead the country to make its due contribution to world peace and development?

As he met the press on the November day the new leadership was formed, Xi summed up the CPC's mission as comprising three responsibilities - to the nation, the people and the Party.