Jia Qinglin , an ally of former general secretary Jiang Zemin tainted by a corruption case, has served five years as a member of the powerful Standing Committee of the Politburo with little distinction.
Although technically No4 in the hierarchy, his post as chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference gives him little power.
Mr Jia, 67, and Mr Jiang are both engineers and the two worked at the Ministry of Machine-building Industry in the 1970s, believed to be the basis for their alliance.
Mr Jia, a native of Hebei , attended university in his home province. He did manual labour in Jiangxi province during the Cultural Revolution before holding jobs in government and state companies. He moved to Fujian province in 1985 as a deputy party secretary and eventually became governor and later party secretary in the 1990s.
His time in Fujian coincided with a major corruption scandal involving smuggling kingpin Lai Changxing , who is now in Canada fighting extradition. Through his Yuanhua Group, Lai bribed government officials to facilitate the illegal import of goods into Xiamen . Some officials involved were tried and executed.
However, Mr Jia was never publicly implicated and was plucked by Mr Jiang to become Beijing mayor not long after the city's former party chief Chen Xitong was ousted in a separate corruption case. Some attribute his survival not only to his powerful patron but also his ability to foster political cronies.
