No. 4 Hu Jintao

Who's the President of China?

While we'll spare you the Abbott and Costello routine, yet it is still a fair question. Though Hu Jintao is the leader of the most populous nation on earth - and a budding superpower - his persona is very much shrouded in mystery.

This much we do know: Hu understands China's place in the sun and he intends to throw its weight around, where appropriate. His just-concluded tour of Latin America is yet another indication that the Middle Kingdom is no longer a self-satisfied empire with little interest in affairs beyond its gates. Rather, China's aggressive foreign policy initiatives have found their way to places often neglected or ignored by its western rivals, particularly the United States.

Hu also just presided over the 2008 Beijing Olympics, a spectacular sporting and cultural showpiece intended to wow the world with China's pageantry and power. While the Games, as an event, came off flawlessly, the tepid international response revealed a deep chasm that has yet been bridged since the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre. China's continued human-rights abuses and its heavy-handed treatment of Tibet remain a source of friction between China and the west.

An engineer by education and a career politician came of age during the tumultuous Cultural Revolution, Hu is well-versed in both policy and politics. How he navigates China through the current economic crisis will be closely watched by both the west and the Chinese citizenry, who has very high regard for his leadership and gave him high marks for his initial rapid response to the Sichuan Earthquake in May.

Hu is also pursuing a legacy that eluded his predecessor Jiang Zemin. On his watch, and partly due to favorable political circumstances, China is re-establishing more formal and direct contact with Taiwan. If Hu were able to normalize relations between the sides and avert any future crisis in the Taiwan Strait, domestically it may be viewed as his greatest achievement.