Xi Jinping's time in Zhejiang: doing the business

For clues about how China's leader-in-waiting Xi Jinping might manage the world's second-largest economy, Zhejiang province is a good place to start looking.

The 3-1/2 years Xi spent at the helm of the mainland's richest province are regarded as a transformative period, during which Zhejiang expanded its private sector and moved toward cleaner, more innovative industries.

After arriving in the autumn of 2003, Xi, as governor and party secretary, set about encouraging factories and heavy industry to move further inland in favour of privately funded research and development facilities. The campaign paid off: R&D investment by private industry increased four-fold to 31.6 billion yuan in 2007, from 5.6 billion yuan in 2003.

Xi also embraced Zhejiang's reputation for supporting private industry in a nation where the majority of large businesses are still state-run. The number of private companies in the province rose to 203 by the time Xi left, compared with 183 when he arrived.

"Xi Jinping's achievement in Zhejiang was impressive, especially in promoting the development of the private economy - which shows he is an open-minded leader," said Dr Cheng Li, a China expert working at the US-based think tank the Brookings Institution.

Zhejiang was already ranked the nation's fourth-largest provincial economy - just behind Jiangsu - when Xi arrived after 17 years in neighbouring Fujian province. The new party secretary was well aware that the private enterprise that blossomed in the 1980s after Deng's Xiaoping's "opening up" was responsible for much of its growth.