Profile: Afghan President Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai

Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani Ahmadzai is scheduled to pay a state visit to China on Oct. 28-31, his first foreign visit since taking office last month.
The following is a brief introduction of the new Afghan leader.
Born in 1949, Ghani spent his early years receiving primary and secondary schooling in Kabul, capital of Afghanistan. Later, he studied in Lebanon and then the United States, where he acquired his doctorate degree.
Ghani devoted years to teaching in the University of California, Berkeley, and Johns Hopkins University.
In 1991, Ghani joined the World Bank. He accepted an appointment as Afghanistan's special advisor to the United Nations in 2001, after the launch of the process of peaceful reconstruction of Afghanistan.
Since 2002, he had served at a series of important posts in his country, including chief advisor to the first interim government, minister of finance and chairman of the Transition Coordination Commission.
He was elected in September 2014 the third president of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan.
In the 1990s, Ghani came to China several times as a World Bank official to visit the construction sites of Xiaolangdi Dam Water Conservancy Pivotal Project in central China's Henan Province. (Cihan/Xinhua)