Zhang Gaoli

Zhang Gaoli's record is one of positional authority rather than prizes. He reached the seventh seat on the Politburo Standing Committee, the body that runs China, and then served five years as the first-ranking vice premier, the senior of four vice premiers and the man who ran the State Council's economic machinery under Premier Li Keqiang. That combination of posts, Standing Committee membership plus the first vice premiership, is held by only a handful of people in any generation. He chaired committees on the Three Gorges Dam, the South-North Water Transfer Project, the Belt and Road Initiative and food safety, and he fronted China's Winter Olympics preparations. Pantheon.world ranks him 26th on its Historical Popularity Index.