Xi Jinping named president of China

Xi Jinping has been declared the new leader for China’s 1.3 billion people at a meeting of the National People’s Congress in Beijing.

Mr Xi’s appointment marks the end a leadership transition which began last November when he was appointed General Secretary of China’s Communist Party.

From that moment, his position as President was a certainty.

However, in keeping with Chinese Communist Party rules, the National People’s Congress (NPC) “voted” on his position.

The NPC is the world’s largest parliament but is widely seen simply as a rubber-stamp body which gives a pre-agreed nod to decisions already made by the ruling Communist Party.

President Xi is set to lead China for the next ten years.

His challenges are numerous: a strong but slowing economy with growing resentment over corruption, an urban-rural wealth gap, continued calls for wholesale political reform and countrywide worries stemming from countless environmental scandals.

These are all challenges which must be balanced against his overriding objective: to ensure continuity of Communist rule, five generations after the revolution which brought Chairman Mao to power.

Xi has spent the past three months preparing for his presidency. Televised appearances have provided clues of his priorities and hints at a more relaxed style of leadership.

With Chinese State Television cameras in tow, he has visited military barracks, impoverished mountain villages and the Shenzhen Economic Zone in southern China where the country’s economic reforms were first introduced two decades ago.

Tackling corruption has also been a key theme. Xi has promised to bring down the “tigers” and the “flies”, a reference to bureaucratic corruption at all levels of society. He also called for traditionally extravagant official banquets to be toned down.

“We must uphold the fighting of tigers and flies at the same time, resolutely investigating law-breaking cases of leading officials and also earnestly resolving the unhealthy tendencies and corruption problems which happen all around people,” Xi said in a January speech to senior Communist Party delegates.

“The style in which you work is no small matter, and if we don’t redress unhealthy tendencies and allow them to develop, it will be like putting up a wall between our party and the people, and we will lose our roots, our lifeblood and our strength,” he said.

The anti-corruption drive has been widely welcomed among China’s vast population.

There are daily protests online and on street corners across the country against corruption.

However, Xi risks a backlash from hard liners within the top political circles if they are forced to give up their perks of power too quickly.

Mr Xi also faces criticism over his own personal wealth. Many question whether the “back-room” dealings he now wants to stamp out helped to put him where he is now.

As a so-called “princeling”, he comes from a thoroughbred Communist background.

His father, Xi Zhongxun, was a Communist revolutionary and former Vice-Premier.

A Bloomberg report late last year estimated that he and his family have $376m in assets; a wealth gained within a corrupt system.

The publication of the report resulted in Bloomberg’s website being blocked on the Chinese mainland.