In this Chinese name, the family name is Wang (王). Wang Huning (Chinese: 王沪宁; pinyin: Wáng Hùníng; born 6 October 1955) is a Chinese political theorist and one of the top leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). He has been a leading ideologist in the country since the 1990s. He has been a member of the CCP's Politburo Standing Committee, China's top decision-making body, since 2017, and is its fourth-ranking member. Widely regarded as the "Grey Eminence" of the CCP, Wang is believed to be the chief ideologue of the Communist Party and principal architect behind the official political ideologies of three paramount leaders since the 1990s. He has held significant influence over policy and decision-making of all three paramount leaders, an exceptionally rare feat in Chinese politics. Wang believes that a strong, centralized state is needed in China to resist foreign influence, an idea that has been influential under Xi. A former academic, Wang was a professor of international politics and dean of the law school at Fudan University. During this time, he gained attention due to his belief in "neoauthoritarianism", which held that a strong leadership was needed for China's stability and political reforms. He started to work for the CCP leadership in 1995 as a director of a research team at the CCP's Central Policy Research Office (CPRO). He became the CPRO's deputy director in 1998, and was promoted to the party's Central Committee and director of the office in 2002, remaining the latter until 2020, the longest tenure in the office. He assisted CCP general secretary Jiang Zemin, and was believed to be instrumental in developing Jiang's signature political theory, the Three Represents. He later became a close confidant of CCP general secretary Hu Jintao, believed to be key to developing his primary theory, Scientific Outlook on Development, and became a secretary of the CCP secretariat in 2007. Wang became a member of the CCP Politburo in 2012, and is believed to have developed close relations with CCP general secretary Xi Jinping, becoming one of his closer advisors. In 2017, he was promoted to the 5th-ranked member of the Politburo Standing Committee and the first-ranking secretary of the CCP Secretariat. He has also chaired leading commissions on ideology and reforms and is believed to have instrumental in developing key concepts under Xi, including Xi Jinping Thought, the Chinese Dream and the Belt and Road Initiative. In 2022, he was succeeded by Cai Qi as the first secretary, and became the 4th-ranking member of the PSC; he is expected to become the chairman of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference in 2023.