Hu Jintao
President
As secretary of the Communist party, president and head of the military, Hu Jintao occupies all of China’s top political positions. The extent of his genuine power, however, should be clearer after this month’s five-yearly party Congress, with the appointment of a new leadership team. In his first term, Hu reset the template for the economy, emphasising equity and the environment rather than growth at all costs. His ability to implement his vision should become easier in his second term, with his people in key positions, but he has shown no appetite for the political changes needed to manage such reforms in the longer term.

Wen Jiabao
Premier
Wen has cultivated a man-of-the-people image since taking over as premier in 2003, seeking out farmers, migrant workers and Aids sufferers in media appearances intended to put a human face on the government’s policy of easing rising inequality. But ahead of a second-term,his softly-softly consensus style of politics has disillusioned many officials and scholars who say he has proved incapable of cutting through the bureaucracy to take tough decisions. He has won plaudits for setting higher environmental standards, but shoulders the blame for China’s go-slow on currency reform.

Li Keqiang
Rising political star
The 52 year-old provincial leader is the man most mentioned as a potential successor to Hu. A bright student who won entry to the elite Peking University in 1977, when competitive entrance exams were re-started after Mao’s demise, Li studied law, and later rose through the ranks of the Communist Youth League, Hu’s power base. He has also been in charge of two difficult provinces, Liaoning, in the north-eastern rust-belt, and prior to that, central Henan, China’s most populous province, where he appears to have emerged unscathed from a scandal over the sale of tainted blood.

Liu Xiang
Athlete
All of China’s Olympians will be under pressure to perform at the Beijing Games, but few will compete under the weight of expectations borne by star hurdler Liu Xiang. Liu, 24, won China’s most treasured gold medal of the Athens Olympics in 2004 by storming home first in the 110m hurdles. “My victory has proved that athletes with yellow skin can run as fast as those with black and white skins,” he said after the Athens race. Chinese fans, sports officials and Liu’s numerous corporate sponsors will be hoping he makes the point again next August.

Zhang Ziyi
Actress
If Gong Li was the best known Chinese actress of the 1980s and 1990s, that mantle has now been passed to Zhang Ziyi. But as with Gong, it is not a position that brings much joy, apart from the profile and the money. Zhang’s testy relationship with her hometown media was exemplified by the reaction to her role in Hollywood’s Memoirs of a Geisha, set in Japan. Zhang’s participation brought attacks that she had demeaned China by playing a “Japanese hooker”. She is slated for more big roles at home but the mixed reaction to her work abroad underlines the ambivalence many Chinese still feel about success in the west.

Ma Jun
Environmental activist
Ma Jun did something simple, but revolutionary, in China, by setting up the Institute of Public and Environmental Affairs in the late 1990s, which names and shames water polluters through its China Water Pollution Map. In line with his pragmatic approach, Ma gives the polluters the chance to prove quietly that they have mended their ways, to get their names off his website. Ma’s activist approach has been replicated across China. Although being a whistleblower can still land you in jail, the thousands of green agencies that have sprung up have become indispensable to the government’s environment policies.

Yang Yuanqing
Chairman, Lenovo
Yang Yuanqing has been learning English the hard way: by using it to run the world’s third largest personal computer company, Lenovo. Since Lenovo’s $1.75bn purchase of IBM’s former PC unit in 2005, Mr Yang has not only been facing one of the world’s most challenging M&A management challenges, he has also acquired respectable conversational English skills by using the language at meetings. Such go-getting enthusiasm is a hallmark of Mr Yang, 42, who has also moved his family to the US. And the effort investment is paying off; integration of the IBM unit seems to be going well.

Xi Jinping
Shanghai party chief
If China’s leadership is a mixture of meritocracy and imperial families, then Xi falls into the latter category. Although not as famous as his wife in some circles, a renowned People’s Liberation Army opera singer, Xi has an excellent party pedigree through his revolutionary father. Since taking charge of scandal-stained Shanghai this year, Xi has been showered with praise by the official media, prompting speculation that he is in line for promotion. In his previous post in Zhejiang, he presided over the nation’s most vital private sector company.

and was singled out for a visit by Hank Paulson, the US Treasury secretary. Chen Yuan
Head, China Development Bank
Little known outside China, Chen Yuan has transformed the China Development Bank into a significant global lending institution since 1998. A policy lender with a mandate to back large local infrastructure projects – CDB has assets larger than the World Bank – Chen, the son of one of China’s most famous economic planning officials, has pushed to make CDB a player in local financial reform, and more recently, offshore. His drive has won what may be CDB’s most important mandate: to back Chinese state companies in overseas resource projects. The ambitious Chen remains a dark horse for promotion in next year’s new government.

Zhang Yimou
Film and stage director
Once reviled at home for making movies popular with foreign audiences, such as Raise the Red Lantern, which his local critics said “made China look ugly and feudal”, Zhang has now become such a darling of the government that he is in charge of the opening ceremony for the Olympics., making him a pivotal figure for the event. Zhang’s class as a director should ensure that the ceremony does not reek of the kind of state theatrics that dominate most official festivalperformances. But how much a free hand he has demanded, and will get remains to be seen.

Richard McGregor and Mure Dickie.