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Aso will have to face off challenges to the Liberal Democratic Party's rule [Reuters]
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A conservative former foreign minister, Taro Aso has been elected as the leader of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).
He is now set to become Japan’s next prime minister - failing any last-minute party defections - after winning Monday's party vote by a wide margin.
Should he eventually replace Yasuo Fukuda, Japan's outgoing prime minister, when parliament convenes on Wednesday, Aso will face a tough task in reinvigorating Japan's slowing economy.
He has said that he will increase government spending while making tax cuts in an attempt to stimulate growth in the economy, the world's second largest.
Takao Toshikawa, political analyst and editor-in-chief of Insideline Inc, said that Aso's attempts to reinvigorate Japan’s economy come in response to the runaway growth of its regional rival China.
"He [Aso] is a business-minded politician. From such viewpoint, he assesses where Japan stands now in this early 21st century and sees that Japan and China cannot stay apart in terms of economy and that they need each other," he said.
"With such a business mind, one cannot imagine that he will deteriorate the ties between Japan and China [to how] they once were."
Aso has criticised Chinese policy towards Japan while serving as foreign minister but softened his tone in the run-up to the LDP leadership election.
Election pledge
A strong nationalist, Aso has called for Japan to exert greater muscle on global security, in contrast to the country's post-second-world-war emphasis on pacifism.
Yet he has also said he will not enter the controversial Yasukuni shrine for Japan's war dead, where 1,000 people convicted for war crimes during the second world war are enshrined.
Aso also has to focus on renewing the Japanese people's faith in the LDP, which is in crisis after the resignation of two prime ministers in three years.
He has promised to hold a general election after he becomes prime minister, in what appears to be a direct challenge to the credibility of Japan's political opposition.
Aso was born into an elite family on the southern island of Kyushu on September 20, 1940.
His grandfather, Shigeru Yoshida, negotiated the peace treaty ending the second world war, while serving as prime minister.
His father-in-law was also a prime minister and his sister is married to a cousin of Emperor Akihito.
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