Hu Jintao

President, People's Republic of China

Date of Birth: 21/12/1942
Place of Birth: Jiangyan, Jiangsu

This month, China's leader embarks on his fourth tour of Africa. The itinerary - Mali, Mauritius, Senegal and Tanzania - shows the range of relationships built up under Hu Jintao. These are medium-size economies with multi-party systems; three are Francophone, much to Paris's irritation.

Hu, a former engineer, joined the Communist Party in 1964 and soon answered Mao Zedong's call to go to the countryside: he spent the 1970s in Gansu, an underdeveloped province, diligently climbing provincial party ranks. Where the Party sent him, Hu went. He became Party chief of Guizhou, then Tibet, where he stifled unrest in Lhasa in December 1988 with martial law. He returned to Beijing in 1992 as the youngest-ever member of the Politboro Standing Committee, and was groomed to succeed President Jiang Zemin (1989-2002).

Some analysts saw Hu as a weak candidate: a bureaucrat with no military allies. By 2005, he had confounded the sceptics and consolidated his position; Jiang was pushed into full retirement and handed control of the military to Hu.

So far, Hu has won plaudits in China: he took power without major political ructions and is likely to hand it over the same way to Vice-President Xi Jinping in 2012. China, despite the global slowdown, remains a rising economic and diplomatic power and a counter to the United States. Yet Hu lacks the charisma of his Premier, Wen Jiabao; his appearance at the 2008 Beijing Olympics was wooden, not triumphant. However, the stern exterior may hide a more adventurous soul: Hu's old biography spoke of his enthusiasm for dancing as a student - lines since purged from the official record. Will African warmth summon the rhythms within? Will the call of Terpsichore overcome years of Party discipline?