China’s New Leaders—the Lineup

Party Secretary of Shanghai since 2007, he has a complex family history. His great-uncle was a defence minister under the Nationalists; his father was the first husband of Jiang Qing, who later married Mao Zedong. His brother, a state security official, defected to the US and his wife is the daughter of a First-Generation major-general.

Yu himself rose under the patronage of Deng Xiaoping and Jiang from the 1980s onwards, running several big cities before becoming Construction Minister in 1998 and joining the wider Politburo in 2002.

Zhang Gaoli

Communist Party Secretary of the big port city of Tianjin, he is another Jiang protégé.

He presided over the growth of Shenzhen in the 1990s before being promoted to Party Secretary of Shandong.

Then, under Hu Jintao, he moved to the key job of Party Secretary of Tianjin which, with its 13 million inhabitants, is a major development zone intended to re-invigorate the Bohai Bay area.

Liu Yunshan

Liu Yunshan is currently Director of the Propaganda Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee.

He will most likely succeed Li Changchun as chief of the agency and become the new "propaganda tsar" of the country.

-Reuters contributed to the report.