Former Shanghai Party Secretary Xi Jinping was elected vice president of China on Saturday.

Born into the family of a former vice premier but tempered by hardships in the countryside, the 54-year-old Xi made his way steadily from village head to state leader.

From 1969 until 1975, he worked as an educated youth sent to the countryside at the Liangjiahe Brigade, Wen'anyi Commune, in Shaanxi Province's Yanchuan County. He joined the Communist Party of China in 1974 and served as branch secretary of the village.

He was elected vice president of the People's Republic of China on Saturday, five months after he was promoted to the nine-member Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, the top decision-making body of the ruling party. His predecessor is 68-year-old Zeng Qinghong.

Xi also takes charge of Party affairs and the Party School of the CPC Central Committee, Hong Kong and Macau affairs, and a top-level team working on preparations for the Beijing Olympics and Paralymics.

Before coming to Zhongnanhai, the compound of the country's top leaders in downtown Beijing, in October last year, Xi reshaped the image of China's financial center of Shanghai as secretary of the city's Party Committee. A social security fund scandal had led to the downfall of the city's former Party chief Chen Liangyu and more than a dozen senior city officials and businessmen.

Xi pledged to be "a good student, a good civil servant and a good team leader" upon arrival in Shanghai in March last year and urged local officials to be stricter with themselves.

After seven months of hard work, Xi succeeded in not only maintaining stability in Shanghai but in correcting its tarnished image by bringing fresh ideas to the city. Shanghai is now more open, harmonious and dynamic.

A son of Xi Zhongxun, a Communist revolutionary hero and former vice premier, Xi Jinping has kept a low profile for decades.

He was sent to a remote mountain village in the northwestern province of Shaanxi when he was only 16 years old. He spent six years there, chopping hay, reaping wheat and shepherding in the daytime, and reading books in the dim light of a kerosene lamp while enduring the harassment of fleas at night. He was later recommended for enrolment at Tsinghua University.

After graduating from the Chemical Engineering Department of Tsinghua in 1979, he became secretary to Geng Biao, the then vice premier and minister of national defense. Three years later he gave up a comfortable life in Beijing and went back to the grassroots to be trained.

In the following two decades, Xi started as deputy secretary of the Party Committee in rural Zhengding County in Hebei Province, and gained experience in the country's affluent coastal areas.

Xi worked in Fujian Province for 17 years, being promoted from vice mayor of Xiamen in the mid-1980s to provincial governor in the early 2000s.

Xi moved to Zhejiang Province in 2002. As secretary of the provincial Party Committee, Xi ordered local authorities to shut down or move serious polluters and high energy businesses, and join hands with Shanghai and Jiangsu Province to achieve a sustainable development.