Xi Jinping’s college classmate is latest close ally given top role as he takes over Communist Party school

Xi Jinping’s former college classmate has been appointed to a senior position leading the Communist Party’s top academy in a promotion that broke with convention.

The appointment of Chen Xi, the party’s personnel chief, as president of the Central Party School is a departure from precedent for filling the post.

For nearly three decades, the post has been held by the first ranking member of the party’s secretariat, a role filled by a member of the top Politburo Standing Committee. But Chen is a member of China’s second-highest decision making body, the Politburo.

Xi himself is a former head of the academy, as was his predecessor Hu Jintao and the recently retired ideology chief Liu Yunshan.

That convention would have made Wang Huning, the fifth-ranking member of the Politburo Standing Committee, favourite to take over the ideology training camp for party cadres. However, his recent promotion to the seven-man committee – the apex of the party’s power structure – from a role as policy researcher also breached convention and was a sign of the esteem in which he is held by Xi.