Li Lanqing has retired as Senior Vice-Premier in charge of the economy as he is over over the Politburo's informal retirement age of 70.

He held the post since 1998, following two decades promoting China's foreign trade and investment.

Born in 1932 in the eastern province of Jiangsu, Mr Li graduated from Shanghai's Fudan University in 1952 and joined the Communist Party the same year.

In the mid-1950s he worked as a trainee in Moscow car plants, before returning to China to work in an automobile works in Jilin Province.

At the start of the reform era in 1978, Mr Li was put in charge of foreign investment at the Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations and Trade.

From 1986 he was the man behind China's marathon campaign for membership of the World Trade Organization - which it joined in 2001.

Mr Li was promoted to vice-premier in 1993 and made it to the Politburo Standing Committee in 1997.