Mr Hu Jintao was born in Jiangyan, Taizhou, Jiangsu province on December 25, 1942 to a poor family.
He joined the Communist Party in April of 1964.
1965: graduated from the country's leading university, Beijing's Tsinghua University, with a degree in hydraulic engineering.
During the years of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, he was sent for service in Gansu Province in Western China and worked on the construction of the Liujiaxia Hydroelectric power plant on the upper Huang He, where he began his party career.
1974: appointed secretary of the Gansu construction committee.
He completed a training programme at the Central Party School in Beijing.
1980-1982: served as deputy chairman of the Gansu construction committee.
1982: Mr Hu, then the head of the Gansu Communist Youth League Committee, was nominated for Communist Party membership and became a member of the secretariat of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League.
1985: pursued his Communist Party career. He served as Party Committee Secretary of Guizhou, and later secretary of the Party Committee of the Tibet Autonomous Region. He was in the Tibet Autonomous Region during the biggest ethnic protest in Lhasa since the 1959 riot.
1992: elected to the Politburo Standing Committee and the Secretariat of the Communist Party Central Committee.
November 2002: elected General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee by a decision of the 16th Communist Party Congress, and then re-elected by the 17th Congress in October of 2007.
March 2003: elected President of China at the first session of the 10th National People's Congress, which serves as China's parliament.
March 2008: re-elected by the 11th National People's Congress.
Mr Hu is married to Liu Yongqing, and has two children - a son and a daughter.
Mr Hu is a great lover of literature and the arts, especially cinema and theatre.
He has visited Russia on several occasions.