Scandals haven't slowed potential Politburo member Hu Chunhua

Hu Chunhua raised the eyebrows of many political observers with how quickly he rose from a staff position with the Communist Youth League in Tibet to become party chief of Inner Mongolia . He now stands a chance of entering the Politburo, after surviving two major scandals that would have cost many top politicians their jobs.

Hu, 49, who was once described by state media as unknown to mainlanders, shares a similar background with President Hu Jintao , earning him the nickname of Little Hu Jintao. The two have spent long stints in Tibet and have a shared base in the youth league.

The older Hu was the region's party chief from 1988 to 1992, while Hu Chunhua worked in the remote autonomous region on and off for nearly 20 years after 1983 - becoming its first deputy party secretary in 2006.

The mutual rapport was so strong that the older Hu was recently reported to have manoeuvred to promote his star protégé into the party's top decision-making body, the Politburo Standing Committee. However, other senior party figures opposed the idea, Reuters reported last month, adding that the younger Hu was instead likely to become the new party chief of Chongqing , one of the country's biggest but also most testing political assignments.

But most analysts agreed that the younger Hu at the very least stood a good chance of ascending to the powerful Politburo.

Upon graduating from the prestigious Peking University with a degree in Chinese language in 1983, Hu decided against remaining in the capital. He turned down job offers in Beijing, and chose to work in Tibet.