An Heir To Power.(Zeng Qinghong)

Zeng Qinghong? Isn't he a pop singer?" asks Qing Qing, a thirtysomething Chinese woman from the northeast, with conviction slowly fading from her face. Most Chinese could be forgiven for not knowing the bespectacled and seemingly affable man who rose in November to the No. 5 position on the powerful Politburo Standing Committee. Zeng is not a household name, after all, and most eyes at the Party Congress were focused on Hu Jintao, who succeeded Jiang Zemin as China's top leader. But Zeng is no stranger to Chinese politics, and he could soon emerge as the most powerful man in China.

By all accounts, the 63-year-old Zeng is much stronger than his ranking would suggest. For more than a decade he served as Jiang Zemin's leading protege and hatchet man, playing a major, if behind-the-scenes, role in Beijing's corridors of power. Zeng now heads the party secretariat, which handles the day-to-day affairs of the party, and in December was handed control of the Central Party School, the top training ground for up-and-coming cadres. But Zeng's resume is likely to grow longer. When the National People's Congress convenes in March, he stands a good chance of being named vice president in charge of foreign affairs, and he may even be tapped as a vice chairman for the influential Central Military Commission. "Zeng is the real power in the day-to-day business of the party," says one political analyst in Beijing. "If he becomes vice president with responsibility for foreign relations as well, what else will be left for Hu Jintao?"

Zeng was born into a political life. The son of respected revolutionary heroes--his father served as a Red Army general and his mother was one of the few women to survive the communists' epic Long March--Zeng has an impeccable pedigree. He grew up in Beijing, playing with other princelings and making the connections that would later establish him as an influential insider. His father, as if aware of his son's future, encouraged him to study the history of the Ming and Ching dynasties to glean insights into the vagaries of court politics.

Zeng first caught Jiang's attention in 1989, when the former Chinese leader was the Shanghai party chief. As protests erupted in Beijing and elsewhere, Jiang, with Zeng as ...