Alone among the 24 full and alternate Politburo members, Shandong party secretary Wu Guanzheng has never worked in a city with a foreign consulate, embassy or media bureau.
This makes the 64 year-old Jiangxi native something of a mystery to those trying to track the political jockeying at the 16th party congress.
'Wu Guanzheng? I would have to check. His name rings a faint bell as someone from the provinces,' says a political officer at a Western embassy when asked about Mr Wu. 'We might have some information on him, but not in any degree of detail.'
Despite his ability to slip under the radar of Beijing's diplomatic community and the media, Mr Wu has maintained a persistent presence at the highest levels of mainland politics.
Throughout the 1990s he hovered in the background, climbing the ladder through a series of provincial promotions and earning himself a reputation as one of outgoing president Jiang Zemin's key regional allies, alongside the likes of Shanghai party secretary Huang Ju and Guangdong party secretary Li Changchun.
A quick review of Mr Wu's record reveals a man apparently incapable of mis-steps. He joined the party in 1962 while a student at Beijing's Tsinghua University, where he studied thermal engineering. Graduating in 1965, just before the Cultural Revolution threw establishments of higher education into turmoil, Mr Wu managed to stay on at Tsinghua for an additional three years of graduate studies before taking a factory technician position in Wuhan.