Wonder if Obama will be around to meet this guy. China's next leader? A look at Xi Jinping's rise. Vice President Xi Jinping was promoted Monday to vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, a key post seen as the penultimate step on the ladder to China's top job in 2013. By Peter Ford, Staff writer / October 19, 2010 Beijing The man most likely to be Chinaâs next president has shown himself a strong supporter of free market economic reforms, but steered clear of a swelling debate over political changes, leaving his future intentions in doubt. Xi has developed a reputation as an efficient administrator and a skilled consensus builder who has managed not to make serious enemies, observers say. Xi made a name for himself as a party prospect in the coastal provinces of Fujian and Zhejiang âwhere he did well promoting the market economy and being very entrepreneur-friendlyâ says Li Cheng, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. In 2007 he was sent to Shanghai as a troubleshooter, to run the countryâs biggest city after the former party leader there had been fired for corruption. His father was purged by Mao Zedong in 1963 and spent 16 years in jail; young Jinping was sent to a particularly grim village in Northeastern China to work in the countryside for several years (and once ran away before being caught by the police). âHe has had first hand experience of how tough life can be and of how brutal old Communist politics could be,â says Huang Jing, an expert in Chinese leadership issues at the National University of Singapore. http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304410504575559623101416204.html