'Young gun' Lu Hao on the rise through Party ranks

China is often thought of as a nation of older leaders. But no one has defied that description quite like Lu Hao .

He was just 18 when, on a spring day in Xian in 1985, he became the youngest Communist Party member in Shaanxi since the Cultural Revolution and the only high school student in the Communist Youth League of China (CYL) Shaanxi committee. As a high school teacher recalled to mainland media in 2008: "The boy had something special."

In many stages of his career he has often been the youngest person ever to hold a particular post. He was, for example, the youngest head of a state-owned factory, and then the youngest vice-major of Beijing since the party took power in 1949.

Today, at 45 and one of the youngest heads of the CYL - a training ground for party and government officials with nearly 80 million members - it is widely expected that he will be an upcoming figure of the nation's sixth generation of leadership.

While Lu has been praised for his work ethic, hard work alone is no guarantee of success in politics. A triumphant career can largely depend on the people one meets along the way.

Lu rose through the party ranks while completing a degree in economics, then a master's degree, at Peking University under Professor Li Yining , one of the mainland's pioneers of market reform and the teacher of first-ranked Vice-Premier Li Keqiang and Li Yuanchao , the head of the party's Organisation Department.