When Henry Paulson made his first official visit to China as US Treasury Secretary in September, he picked Zhejiang's provincial capital, Hangzhou , as his first stop for having dinner with a rising political star he regards as a friend.
Mr Paulson had come to know provincial party secretary Xi Jinping in his many visits to the mainland when he was with US investment bank Goldman Sachs. Their meeting now takes on new significance with Mr Xi's promotion to Shanghai party chief.
A native of Shaanxi , the 53-year-old Mr Xi is the son of party elder Xi Zhongxun and one of the elite princelings. He joined the Communist Youth League in 1971 and joined the Communist Party in 1974.
He has a strong track record working at the local government level and has served in four provinces during his career: Shaanxi, Hebei , Fujian and Zhejiang.
In 2002, he became the party chief of Zhejiang, one of China's most affluent provinces which flourished on the back of robust private entrepreneurship that boasts of some of the world's biggest private manufacturers.
Last year, the province's gross domestic product grew by 13.6 per cent to 1.56 trillion yuan. That compared with Shanghai's 12 per cent growth to 1.03 trillion yuan last year.