Leaders in waiting more educated and open-minded
Compared with their predecessors, the mainland's next generation of leaders are younger, better-educated and fluent in English. They have a greater understanding of the world and are more open to new ideas.
They will need all these qualities when they eventually take on the severe challenges and heavy responsibilities of changing the face of the world's most populous country.
Many young members of the new leadership lineup unveiled yesterday at the closing of the Communist Party's 17th National Congress will form the so-called fifth generation to take over power at the party's 18th congress in 2012, when President Hu Jintao, Premier Wen Jiabao and the rest of the fourth-generation leaders will retire.
Many were among the first university students to win their places in intensely competitive entrance exams revived in 1977, as late leader Deng Xiaoping and other rehabilitated reformers began to abandon Mao Zedong's radicalism. In the previous decade, university enrolment was based more on political loyalty than academic merit.
'There are some striking differences between the fourth-generation leaders and those tipped to take over top positions in five years,' said Steve Tsang, a political science professor at Oxford University's St Antony's College. 'The new leaders are generally younger, better educated and, to some degree, less ideological.'