On Nov. 15 a new Standing Committee of the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party was revealed. Apart from the Party leader Xi Jinping, and his deputy and head of economic affairs Li Keqiang, five names were relatively new. Liu Yunshan is one of them.
Liu Yunshan was born in Xinzhou City, Shanxi Province in 1947. His parents were Chinese Communist Party (CCP) cadres in Inner Mongolia. His father was a subordinate of Bo Yibo, the father to disgraced official Bo Xilai. After graduating from Jining Normal School in the province, he worked as a teacher, a clerk at the propaganda department, and a reporter for the Inner Mongolia Bureau of the state mouthpiece Xinhua. Between July 1982 and February 1984, Liu Yunshan served as deputy secretary of Communist Youth League in Inner Mongolia, while Hu Jintao was the secretary of the Secretariat of the Communist Youth League Central Committee. Therefore, Liu has been classified as belonging to Hu’s Youth League Faction.
Liu rose to be a member of the Standing Committee of the CCP Inner Mongolia Autonomous Regional Committee and secretary of the CCP Chifeng Municipal Committee. After graduating from the Central Party School in 1992, he became deputy head of the Propaganda Department of the CCP Central Committee. In 2002, he became head of the Propaganda Department and a member of the Politburo.
Liu is reported to have ingratiated himself with Jiang Zemin by organizing pro-Jiang propaganda in the domestic and foreign press. He is opposed to any democratic reforms in China.
As one of the country’s propaganda deputies he has manipulated and controlled the media system in mainland China to protect the CCP’s rule. When Chinese netizens once voted for “the agency that you want to remove the most,” the two at the top of the list were the Political and Legislative Affairs Committee, which controls the security forces, and the Central Propaganda Department, which Liu will be heading up in his new job.
Editor’s Note: When Chongqing’s former top cop, Wang Lijun, fled for his life to the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu on Feb. 6, he set in motion a political storm that has not subsided. The battle behind the scenes turns on what stance officials take toward the persecution of Falun Gong. The faction with bloody hands—the officials former CCP head Jiang Zemin promoted in order to carry out the persecution—is seeking to avoid accountability for their crimes and to continue the campaign. Other officials are refusing to participate in the persecution any longer. Events present a clear choice to the officials and citizens of China, as well as people around the world: either support or oppose the persecution of Falun Gong. History will record the choice each person makes.
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