Hu Jintao, general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and president of China, succeeded Jiang Zemin as chairman of the CPC Central Military Commission at the Fourth Plenum of the 16th CPC Central Committee, which ended here Sunday.

A native of Jixi County, Anhui Province, Hu was born in December 1942. In 1959, he was enrolled by Qinghua University and graduated from the Hydraulic Engineering Department in 1965.

Hu began to work at the grassroots in west China's Gansu Province in 1968 and stayed there until 1982 when he became a member of the Secretariat of the Communist Youth League of China Central Committee and president of the All-China Youth Federation. Beginning in 1985, he was appointed, successively, secretary of the CPC Guizhou Provincial Committee and of the CPC Tibet Autonomous Regional Committee.

In 1992, 49-year-old Hu was elected member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee at the First Plenum of the 14th CPC Central Committee, which was then widely considered as an important step the CPC had taken toward generational transition of the central leadership.

From 1993 to the end of 2002, Hu was concurrently president of the Party School of the CPC Central Committee, which has been the training base for senior CPC cadres and backbones of theoretical studies over the past 70 years.

In September 1997, Hu was re-elected member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee at the First Plenum of the 15th CPC Central Committee.

Hu became vice-president of China in March 1998 and vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission in September 1999.

In November 2002, Hu was elected general secretary of the CPC Central Committee at the 16th National Congress of the CPC.

In March 2003, He was elected president of China at the First Session of the 10th National People's Congress, the top legislature of the country.

Hu and his wife Liu Yongqing were schoolmates at Qinghua University. The couple have a son and a daughter, who are also graduates of Qinghua University.

Editor: Catherine