China's troubleshooter Wang takes financial helm

Known for his no-nonsense style and getting the job done, the man who steered the Chinese capital through the SARS crisis now faces an even bigger challenge.

Wang Qishan, the 59-year-old former mayor of Beijing, was named on Monday as one of four vice-premiers. He is expected to take charge of financial affairs, a cabinet post that puts him at the helm of the sector at a time of rising inflation and intense global financial uncertainties.

He brings to the position not just decades of experience in economics and banking, but a streak of successes as a troubleshooter.

As a protege of former premier Zhu Rongji, who curbed rampant inflation in the early 1990s, Wang will be expected to repeat the trick today now that inflation is near 12-year highs.

"He is himself a very capable technocrat. But I think here, symbolism also matters a lot," said Victor Shih, a Chinese politics expert at Northwestern University in Illinois and author of "Factions and Finance in China".

Wang is also a "princeling", the son-in-law of the late former vice-premier Yao Yilin, a mentor of Zhu who helped steer the country through an earlier bout of inflation in the 1980s.

"So now he is seen as sort of the next inflation fighter of China, succeeding Zhu Rongji and also because he himself is the son-in-law of Yao," Shih said.

Not that Wang's biography suggests he was destined to lead the financial affairs of the world's fourth-biggest economy.

Born in the northern province of Shanxi, he was sent to work on a communal farm in the former Communist stronghold of Yan'an, in western Shaanxi province, during the Cultural Revolution.

He later studied history in nearby Xi'an, home to the famed Terracotta Warriors, and worked for several years in the Shaanxi provincial museum before going to Beijing at the age of 31 as a history researcher at a top government think-tank.

While Wang's connections couldn't have hurt -- in addition to marrying into a powerful family, his father, Wang Qian, was former Communist Party boss of Shanxi -- he showed his technocratic mettle through a series of tough assignments.

"TO BE HONEST"

He served as a vice-governor of the central bank from 1993-94, was president of big state lender China Construction Bank from 1996 to 1997 and later oversaw the clean-up of the troubled trust sector following the 1998 collapse of Guangdong International Trust and Investment Corp.

He later headed up the cabinet's economic restructuring office and, after a brief post as Party boss of the southern island province of Hainan, was parachuted into Beijing during the 2003 SARS virus scare. His job was to clean up the city's image after his predecessor was sacked for covering up the crisis.

As mayor of Beijing, he took aim at over-the-top billboards for expensive housing projects and told Beijingers to stop bad habits such as spitting, shouting and pushing in time for the Olympics. He maintains the post of executive president of the Beijing Organising Committee for the Olympic Games.

Known for starting his sentences with the phrase "to be honest", Wang will have to harness his relatively blunt style to cut through bureaucratic red tape that has slowed reform of an increasingly interconnected financial sector.

"Princelings can speak more freely -- they usually have more leeway to speak more harshly to their subordinates and more honestly to their superiors if they choose to," Shih said.

Wang also boasts good ties in the West, which could serve him in good stead if, as expected, he takes on responsibility for high-level economic talks with Washington and Brussels.

While Li Keqiang, 52, is now the first vice-premier and the front-runner to succeed Wen Jiabao as premier in 2013, Wang is also mentioned as a contender.

"If Wang Qishan gets it, he'll serve just one term," a source with ties to the leadership told Reuters.