Mr Luo spent nearly a decade in Germany, learning metal-casting techniques, and escaped the great famine on the mainland in the late 1950s. He remained largely unscathed during the Cultural Revolution and moved up the ladder rapidly afterwards.

As head of the legal committee, his main responsibilities were to regulate the behaviour of party members, dispense discipline and deal with major corruption cases.

Late last month, he held a committee meeting to summarise his efforts to improve the legal system, and a consensus was reached on some of his achievements. Top of the list was the introduction of videotaping of police interrogations for most criminal cases, as part of the drive for greater transparency.

The second major accomplishment was his role in the decision to wrest the power to impose the death penalty from provincial courts and return it to the Supreme People's Court.

Mr Luo also supported the expansion of arbitration and mediation systems, lowered legal costs, allowed the public to attend court hearings, allowed television broadcasting of a number of verdicts and introduced robes for judges.

But a few dark clouds hang over him. His annual report received the lowest rate of acceptance from members at the past two National People's Congress meetings. Corruption and a lack of independence continue to plague the legal system.

Mr Luo has been criticised abroad for his heavy-handed crackdown on the Falun Gong spiritual movement, and he has come under fire for supervising the arrests of dissidents and labour activists.