The secretive Communist Party of China has provided one of its first clues to the identities of its next generation of leaders by appointing a new boss to manage the glittering metropolis of Shanghai. Xi Jinping was made party secretary of the city, and thus the most powerful man in Shanghai.

Mr Xi is a scion of one of the Communist Party’s most respected revolutionary families and is presently the party boss of Zhejiang province, in the southeast, which is one of the most prosperous regions in China.

As Shanghai party secretary he should be assured of a seat on the ruling Politburo — in an electoral process that is little more than a formality — when the party’s Central Committee convenes for its next plenum, probably in mid-spring.

At 53, he will become the youngest member of the Politburo and thus a contender for its elite nine-member standing committee and for a future leadership post. A new Politburo is due to be elected at the next party congress, in the autumn. That five-yearly meeting is a crucial opportunity for President Hu Jintao, the current party chief, to try to manoeuvre his political protégés into key positions.

The appointment of Mr Xi ends a scandal that has paralysed politics and decision-making in China’s richest city. The previous party chief, Chen Liangyu, was dismissed late last year amid charges that he and his cronies had used city pension funds to make speculative investments in highways and property.

But the fall of Mr Chen, who was close to Jiang Zemin, the previous party chief and president, was also a move by Mr Hu to consolidate his own position and erode the lingering influence of his predecessor.

One family friend of Mr Xi described his appointment as a careful compromise. “He is a very neutral person who has always avoided showing any strong political opinions, neither supporting or opposing people and their policies openly. He is not someone with great charisma, neither will he cause any harm. He is the perfect compromise candidate who would be acceptable to Jiang’s ‘Shanghai gang’.”

Those qualities are crucial for anyone hoping to rise to the top of the Communist Party since such powerful personalities as Chairman Mao — whose last surviving son died at the weekend — and the late reformist Deng Xiaoping have been replaced by a more collective form of leadership.

Mr Xi, a graduate of the prestigious Tsinghua University who has degrees in chemistry and law, benefits not only from his family prestige but also from his record as a committed reformist in some of China’s richest coastal provinces.

The “princeling”, as the children of top leaders are commonly known, comes to the job in Shanghai untainted by previous associations with the city and its leaders.

Family figure

— Xi Jinping was born in 1953 in northwestern Shaanxi province

— He is a son of Xi Zhongxun, one of the founders of the Communist guerrilla armies that fought in north China and a close ally of Deng Xiaoping, who threw his support behind market reform

— Xi Jinping was governor and then party secretary of Fujian province in southeast China, before moving to the top job in Zhejiang in 2003

— Henry Paulson, the US Treasury Secretary, began a visit to China last September by having dinner with Mr Xi. He described him as “the kind of guy who knows how to get things over the goal line”

— Mr Xi is married to Peng Liyuan, a soprano and one of the most famous singers in China Jane Macartney

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