China's new helmsmen (2)

FROM THE PEOPLE

The seven Standing Committee members of the Political Bureau have witnessed and endured China's vicissitudes and hardships over the last six decades, including the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976).

Xi and Li were born in the 1950s, while the other five were born in the mid- to late 1940s.

Xi, Li, Zhang Dejiang and Wang toiled in communes and villages during the Cultural Revolution, when millions of high school graduates were sent to rural areas to receive "re-education" from peasants and help with rural development.

It was during their re-education that Xi and Li received their first official titles. Acting as the Party branch secretaries of their respective production brigades, they got the chance to learn administration at the grassroots level.

Yu worked as a technician at a radio factory in the city of Zhangjiakou in north China's Hebei province for a few years, while Liu was a teacher before becoming a reporter at the Xinhua News Agency. Zhang Gaoli was a craneman and loader at an oil company in south China's Guangdong province after graduating from university.

Such experiences, analysts observed, gave them keen insight into China's situation and helped them understand the people's woes and expectations.

Xi previously said that he received a great deal of guidance from two groups of people: the old generation of revolutionaries and the village people in Shaanxi, his ancestral home where he received seven years of "re-education."