Hu Jintao Is China's New President

Hu Jintao was selected Saturday to replace Jiang Zemin as the president of a fast-changing China, the last major step in a sweeping transition to a younger generation of leaders that has been years in the making.

Hu, 60, who was vice president, claims the top post four months after ascending to the acme of China's ruling Communist Party, the most powerful position in the land. Jiang, 76, was expected to stay on as leader of the government's military commission — and wield significant influence from behind the scenes.

Delegates voted 2,937 to to 7 to elevate Hu — a vote largely considered to be a party rubber stamp.

Though the presidency has few official powers in China, Hu's elevation to it — and the prestige it brings on the world stage — reinforces his status as the country's new paramount leader.

Hu was picked in the early 1990s by then-supreme leader Deng Xiaoping as the top contender to succeed Jiang. Currently vice president, Hu spent the past decade handling increasingly demanding tasks meant to test him and prepare him for leadership. Most recently, he held top party management posts handling promotions and other sensitive business.

His first big test came after NATO bombed the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade in 1999. Hu was the government's public face, making his first major speech on Chinese television during anti-U.S. and British rioting that followed, despite Washington's insistence that it was a mistake.

In 2001, Hu handled a tense standoff with the United States after a U.S. military surveillance plane made a forced landing on Hainan island after a mid-air collision with a Chinese fighter jet.

Despite his new powers and post as president, Hu is surrounded by eight other members of a Standing Committee that Jiang loaded with his own allies before stepping down. And for at least the near future, Jiang will remain very much a part of the nation's power structure as head of the military commission.

China's new leaders will take charge of an increasingly capitalist society of 1.3 billion people that is struggling to cope with its entry into the free-trading World Trade Organization.

Despite its social and economic transformations, China's communist political system has resisted change — a closed, secretive system that harshly punishes dissent and any moves regarded as threats to its monopoly on power.