It has been reported that xi greatly values the

were both “worker-peasant-soldier students” at the Department of Chemical Engineering.
It has been reported that Xi greatly values the friendships he developed in his years at
Tsinghua.
61
Throughout his tenure as a top provincial leader in Fujian and Zhejiang, Xi
regularly got together with his Tsinghua schoolmates, in Beijing and elsewhere.
62
Even
when Xi became China’s heir apparent after 2007, he and his wife still attended his
class’s alumni reunions in Beijing.
63
In college, both Xi and Chen were sports fans, and they were both interested in politics
and world affairs. They became close friends almost immediately after they met at
Tsinghua. Chen excelled not only academically, but also once won the 100-meter track
championship at the Beijing College Athletics Games. With Xi’s recommendation, Chen
Xi joined the Chinese Communist Party at Tsinghua in November 1978, a few months
before graduation.
64
Soon after Xi became a member of the Politburo Standing Committee in 2007, he
promoted Chen to be vice minister and deputy party secretary of education. It was
believed that this appointment would help Chen eventually obtain the post of minister of
education, but that did not happen; the promotion went to Yuan Guiren, a protégé of
Premier Wen Jiabao, in October 2009.
65
In September 2010, Chen was transferred to
Liaoning Province, where he served as deputy party secretary, a post in an important
provincial-level administration that could broaden Chen’s leadership profile. Seven
months later, Chen returned to Beijing and took the post of party secretary of the China
Association for Science, a position equivalent to the rank of minister that usually assures
a seat in the Central Committee of the CCP. Chen indeed obtained full membership at the
18
th
Party Congress. Soon after Xi became the top leader of the CCP, Chen was made
executive deputy director of the CCP Organization Department, essentially becoming
Xi’s chief personnel officer.
Chen Xi was born in Putian County, Fujian Province, in September 1953, making him
three months younger than Xi. At the age of 17, he began his career as a factory worker
in a university-run mechanical plant in his hometown of Fuzhou City. After graduating

Li, China Leadership Monitor , no. 44
16
from Tsinghua in 1979, he returned home to teach at Fuzhou University for a few
months, and then, in the fall of 1979, enrolled again in his old department at Tsinghua
University for graduate level studies.
After receiving his master’s degree, Chen pursued a political career as a Youth League
official, serving consecutively as director of the Department of Sports and Military
Training; deputy secretary and then secretary of the Youth League Committee of
Tsinghua University; and standing committee member of the party committee of
Tsinghua University responsible for student affairs (1982–90). In December 1990, Chen
went abroad to study chemical engineering at Stanford University as a visiting scholar for
14 months. After he returned to Tsinghua in 1992, he served as deputy party secretary of
the Department of Chemical Engineering; deputy party secretary, executive deputy party