Xi Jinping mini Biography

QUICK FACTS 

NAME

Xi Jinping 

OCCUPATION

President (China)

DATE OF BIRTH

June 15, 1953

PLACE OF BIRTH

Beijing, China

EDUCATOON

Tsinghua University

Xi Jinping, Han nationality, is a native of Fuping County, Shaanxi Province. He was born in 1953, entered the work force in 1969, joined the CYLC in 1971 and joined the CPC in 1974.

Xi has served in four provinces during his government and Party career: Shaanxi, Hebei, Fujian and Zhejiang. He has held Party positions in the CPC Fuzhou City Committee, and in 1990 he became president of the Party school in Fuzhou City.

In 1999 he was elected vice-governor of Fujian province, then governor a year later. In 2002 he took up senior government and Party positions in Zhejiang Province. Xi Jinping was an alternate member of the 15th CPC Central Committee and was a member of the 16th CPC Central Committee.

In 2007 he became a member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo Bureau of the 17th CPC Central Committee and Chairman of 17th CPC Central Committee Party Building Leading Small Group. He is also the President of the Party School of the CPC Central Committee.In 2008, he became Vice-President of the People's Republic of China.

In 2010 he became Vice-Chairman of the CPC Central Military Commission and Vice-Chairman, Central Military Commission of the PRC.

In 2012 he became General Secretary of the 18th CPC Central Committee a member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo of the 18th CPC Central Committee and Chairman of the CPC Central Military Commission. In 2013 Xi was elected Chairman of the PRC Central Military Commission and President of China.

In 2014 Xi became head of China's new national security commission.

Mariano Rajoy Biography

QUICK FACTS

NAME

Mariano Rajoy

OCCUPATIO

 Prime minister (Spain)

DATE OF BIRTH

March 27, 1955

EDUCATION

University of Santiago de Compostela,

PLACE OF BIRTH

Santiago de Compostela, Spain

FULL NAME

Mariano Rajoy Brey

Synopsis

Rajoy was raised in the Galicia region of northern Spain. He studied law at the University of Santiago de Compostela, receiving a degree in 1978. After briefly working as a land registrar, he embarked on a career in politics, being elected when 26 years old as a regional deputy for what would become the Popular Party (Partido Popular; PP). He served in local and regional government through most of the 1980s.

From 1996 Rajoy served in the PP government of Prime Minister José María Aznar, holding, successively, the posts of minister of public administration, minister of education and culture, and minister of the interior, and in 2003 Aznar handpicked Rajoy as the party’s new leader. The following year the conservative PP was expected to claim another victory in the general elections, but what was widely perceived as the government’s inadequate response to the Madrid train bombings, which occurred just days before the election, put a dent in the party’s support. Rajoy again failed to lead the PP to victory in 2008. But as the European sovereign debt crisis continued to escalate, the Popular Party ousted the reigning Socialists with a landslide victory in the 2011 election, winning the biggest parliamentary majority in nearly three decades.

A social conservative raised as a Roman Catholic, Rajoy was especially outspoken about curbing abortion rights and in his opposition to same-sex marriages. Nevertheless, during his tenure in the PP, he helped lead the party from the hard right to centre-right. Many hoped that Rajoy and the PP, which had, from the late 1990s, overseen the fiscal preparations necessary for Spain to adopt the euro, would help steer the country out of spiraling recession. He was sworn in as prime minister on December 21, 2011, and he pledged to implement a series of austerity measures that would reduce Spain’s deficit.