Wen Jiabao
A member of the Standing Committee of the 17th CCP Central Committee Politburo, Wen Jiabao has been ranked third in the politburo since the 16th CCP Congress in November 2002. He was appointed premier of the State Council in March 2003 and re-appointed premier in March 2008. Wen, a former geologist, is known as a mild-mannered consensus-seeker. He is also known as a political survivor, having served under three CCP general secretaries, two of which were purged.
Wen was born in Tianjin in 1942. From 1960-65, he studied in the Department of Geology and Minerals at the Beijing Institute of Geology and from 1965-68 took postgraduate courses in structural geology. Wen joined the CCP in April 1965. From 1968-82, he worked with the Geo-Mechanics Survey Team under the Gansu Provincial Geological Bureau, becoming deputy director in 1981. In 1982, Wen was transferred to Beijing where he worked in the Ministry of Geology as head of the Policy and Regulations Research Section, and then vice minister and deputy secretary of its Leading Party Members' Group and concurrently director of its Political Department.
In 1985, Wen was appointed deputy director of the General Office of the CCP Central Committee and promoted to the directorship in 1986. In 1992, Wen served as an alternate member of the politburo and a member of the 14th CCP Central Committee Secretariat. Wen served as vice chair of the National Committee on Minerals Resources and deputy head of the State Leading Group for Science and Technology in 1996. He was a member of the 13th and 14th CCP central committees and a member of the 15th CCP Central Committee Politburo. He was appointed vice premier of the State Council on March 18, 1998, and Standing Committee member of the 16th CCP Central Committee Politburo on November 15, 2002.
Wen and his wife, also a geologist, have a son who works for an Internet firm and a daughter who works for a bank.