He was seen in SARS wards and AIDS-stricken villages. He visited four provinces in nine days during the recent weather disaster, bowing to families of deceased heroes and apologizing to millions stranded at railway stations.

While helping China achieve double-digit GDP growth for five consecutive years, he has lived up to his motto: "The most important issue under the sun is to care for the wellbeing of the people."

Wen Jiabao, the 65-year-old premier, has increased his popularity since he first took office in March 2003. He was approved by the parliament yesterday to be premier of the State Council for another five-year term.

Throughout his first tenure as premier, Wen stood in the vanguard to confront every disaster. He has visited most of the country's 2,800-odd counties, wearing his simple jacket and sneakers and chatting with farmers, miners and migrant workers.

He once invited a dozen grain farmers, rural teachers, coal miners, migrant workers and community doctors to Zhongnanhai, the leadership compound usually off-limits to commoners, to hear their comments on State affairs and government policy.

Since becoming premier in March 2003, Wen has underscored the wellbeing of the people, particularly those in the underdeveloped western regions. He has led the government in a campaign to provide equal education, medical care and other social security coverage for the country's 730 million farmers.

For five years, his government work reports to the annual parliamentary session were full of inspiring new policies aimed at improving the livelihoods of the people, and led to the agricultural tax exemption and direct subsidies to grain farmers.

Wen, whose own parents were teachers, has underscored time and again the importance of education, and facilitated the exemption of tuition and miscellaneous fees for primary and middle school students in the rural areas, as well as for students of six leading teachers' universities across the country.

This year, he promised nine years of free compulsory education in both urban and rural areas.

Trained as a geologist, Wen is cool-headed and steadfast, and confronts the nation's woes with the persistence of an avid prospector, and the precision of a professor.