BEIJING, March 17, 2008 (AFP) - Li Keqiang has risen through China's political ranks in the wake of his mentor President Hu Jintao, and now finds himself next in line to head the nation's government.

Li, 52, was tapped as the likely next prime minister on Monday by the National People's Congress, which gave him a five-year term as vice premier.

The move is seen as likely to put him at the head the government when current Premier Wen Jiabao's term ends in 2013.

'He is going to succeed Wen Jiabao if he does nothing seriously wrong. He is being groomed,' said Joseph Cheng, a China watcher at City University of Hong Kong.

'And because he is being groomed, he probably will not be very much pinned down in his responsibilities. He has no specific portfolio.'

Wen was given a second term by the parliament on Sunday, a day after the rubber stamp body named Hu Jintao to another five-year term as president.

It is another step up for Li, former party chief of the northeastern industrial province of Liaoning, who in October was named to the elite Politburo Standing Committee, China's highest decision-making body.

Trained as an economist, Li has been widely seen for many years as a protege of Hu and started working for the Communist Youth League -- Hu's power base -- in 1982.

Born in eastern China's impoverished Anhui province, Li at age 19 was sent to the countryside with masses of other youngsters during the tumultuous Cultural Revolution to be 're-educated' by peasants.

He followed in Hu's footsteps to became leader of the Communist Youth League in 1993 at the age of 38.

In 1999 he was named China's youngest provincial governor, taking charge of central Henan province at the age of 43, where he was credited with spearheading economic development and attracting investment to the poor inland region.

While in his new role Li may not get a specific area of responsibility, he could be put in overall charge of a wide-ranging government reform plan expected to be gradually completed by 2020, analysts said.

Some observers say there are potential blots on Li's otherwise immaculate resume.

His term in Henan was somewhat tarnished by scandal, as it emerged large numbers of farmers had been infected with AIDS when selling their blood.

His move to Liaoning was accompanied almost immediately by one of the largest recent mining disasters, an explosion that killed more than 200.

But in an apparent testament to his political connections, he rose above those scandals.

Li was one of four vice premiers picked in a parliamentary vote. They were the only nominees.

The others included Beijing ex-mayor Wang Qishan and Zhang Dejiang, the former top party official in south China. Hui Liangyu, a member of China's mainly Muslim Hui minority, was renamed to a vice premiership.

However, in his new position he will not able to afford bad publicity, and the leadership may have made preparations to keep him out of obvious trouble, according to observers.

'If anything goes wrong in finance, well, then it's Wang Qishan. Anything goes wrong in trade, economic work, it's Zhang Dejiang. And agriculture, natural disaster, it's Hui Liangyu,' said Cheng.