Xi Jinping
Xi Jinping has become China's new Communist Party chief, and is now certain to take over next year as the country's President as well.
He is a so-called 'princeling', the privileged son of a former top leader, learning Chinese politics from an early age when his father was purged and he himself was sent to work in the countryside.
Mr Xi's close ties to the military and his support for state-owned industries suggest he's conservative.
Born in Beijing in 1953, Mr Xi studied chemical engineering in Tsinghua before joining the Party in 1974. He worked in Hebei, Fujian and Zhejiang, before being named Shanghai party chief in 2007 and tasked with cleaning up a corruption scandal.
He has a reputation for straight-talking, telling officials in 2004: 'Rein in your spouses, children, relatives, friends and staff, and vow not to use power for personal gain.'
To many inside China, Mr Xi is less famous than his wife - the folk singer Peng Liyuan.
Li Keqiang
Li Keqiang is the current Premier of the People's Republic of China and party secretary of the State Council.
Li Keqiang's career has seen him rise from manual labourer on a rural commune to provincial party chief and now a leader-in-waiting.
He has a reputation for caring about China's less well-off, perhaps the result of a modest upbringing.
He is close to Hu Jintao, who he worked with in the party's youth league, and he is widely expected to take over from Wen Jiabao as China's premier. But his easy-going manner and consensual style has prompted some to question whether he is dogged enough to tackle strong vested interests which dominate much of China's economy.
Born in 1955 in Anhui Province, Mr Li reportedly rejected his father's offer of a local party career, enrolling instead at Beijing's Peking University to study law. Mr Li became deputy party secretary for Henan Province in 1998, and became China's youngest provincial governor a year later.
