Liu Yunshan: Down-to-earth journalist joins CPC top leadership

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At his helm, the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee is devoted to building ideology, culture and theory, since publicity has always been an important part of the work for the CPC in governing China.

As deputy head of the Publicity and Ideological Work Leading Group of the CPC Central Committee, Liu mobilized more than 3,000 scholars and researchers in 2004 to work on an eight-year project on better adapting Marxism to China's real conditions. Some latest ideological research results were used in designing disciplinary layout of social sciences and compiling textbooks.

He encourages the Party and government departments to appropriately treat, use and manage media and create conditions for media to sniff out wrongdoing or corruption.

Minutes after the 8.0-magnitude earthquake rocked Southwest China's Sichuan and neighboring Gansu and Shaanxi provinces on May 12, 2008, Liu asked the China Central Television to live broadcast the catastrophe without interruption to inform the nation of the relief work.

Seeing the timely reports, the Chinese people showed an outpouring of love and donated billions of yuan to help survivors from the quake that left 87,000 people dead or missing.

The Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee later reassured Chinese media to swiftly, accurately, openly and transparently report on major social events of public concern under the effective management and proper guidance of higher authorities.

Such a media atmosphere led to the exposure of several food and drug safety scandals in the past several years, including farms adding cancer-causing clenbuterol to pig feed to produce lean meat, restaurants serving food cooked with recycled oil known as "gutter oil," infant formula tainted with melamine, and chromium-contaminated capsules.

Moreover, the country's media are under profound changes brought by the rise of the Internet, which Liu depicted as "revolutionary."

Like 500 million other Chinese Internet users, Liu surfs the Internet every day to keep himself updated on the latest news and understand what heated topics the media and the public are discussing online.

"China should never reject any advanced things," Liu has said. "We support the free, orderly and secure flow of information on the Internet."

Trailblazing a path to make China a cultural power is a challenge facing Liu, who in 2010 set forth his thinking on self-consciousness, self-confidence and self-improvement of the Chinese culture, which was commented by some Internet users as a "strategic vision."

He took another bold step to plan the reform of the cultural system to boost China's soft power, a move some saw as difficult as that in the early stages of the reform and opening up in the 1980s.

The reform of the cultural system drove tens of thousands of public cultural institutions and millions of cultural workers to the market, but benefited more people, particularly those living in rural places.

Liu said repeatedly that the development of the cultural sector must be geared to the needs of the people, particularly the masses at the grassroots levels.

Over the past decade, a comprehensive system has been established in the country to provide flourishing cultural creation and production and entertainment to the public.

As a result, every village in China now has access to TV and radio programs, while an increasing number of bookstores have been opened in remote villages, and mobile cinemas been offered to villagers who rarely had chance to see movies.

Liu hardly takes holidays or vacations, as his schedule is always full of work arrangement.

Reading is his favorite hobby after work and he often writes essays in his spare time.

He is well connected with artists and celebrities from the press and the cultural sector.

Liu is married to Li Sufang, who has retired. They have two sons.