Li Changchun (born February 1, 1944) is a retired Chinese politician and a former senior leader of the Chinese Communist Party. He served on the Politburo Standing Committee, the party's top leadership council, and as the top official in charge of propaganda, between 2002 and 2012. He also served as Chairman of the CCP Central Guidance Commission for Building Spiritual Civilization, de facto head of propaganda and media relations.
Li had a widely varying political career spanning three provinces, first as Governor of Liaoning, then Party Secretary of Henan, and then CCP Committee Secretary of Guangdong, before being promoted to the national leadership in 2002. He retired in 2012.
Biography
Early life and career
Li Changchun was born in February 1944 in modern-day Dalian, Liaoning, then administered by the Empire of Japan as "Dairen", Kwantung Leased Territory. He joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in 1965 and graduated with a degree in electrical engineering from the Harbin Institute of Technology in 1966. In 1983, at age 39, he became the youngest mayor and Party secretary of a major city, of Shenyang, the capital of Liaoning. In 1982, he was also made an alternate member of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party at the age of 38, the youngest member of the body at the time. In 1987, he became governor of Liaoning province, a post he kept until 1990. As governor, mainland China's first expressway was built in the province, linking the cities of Shenyang and Dalian. In addition, Li pushed for the reform of state-owned enterprises, aiming to decrease state involvement in their operations.
After General Secretary Zhao Ziyang was purged from the party leadership in 1989 during the fallout from the Tiananmen Square protests that same year, Li was initially also thought to have been removed from the leadership because he was a supporter of Zhao. Li's appearance on state television weeks later showed that this was not the case.
In 1990, Li was transferred from his job in Liaoning province to central Henan province. In his memoirs, Li recounted that he was ill-prepared for his new assignment and felt homesick. The central authorities had not given him much prior notice about his transfer, and did not inform him why he was being moved or facilitate an orderly transition process. Li, as a result, was somewhat critical of the party's transfer process but nonetheless duly accepted his new assignment. He had succeeded then-Henan governor Cheng Weigao, who had been transferred to Hebei province as part of a three-province 'leader swap' orchestrated by the party's leaders. Henan, a populous agricultural province without a strong industrial base, presented Li with significant challenges, and Li had experienced unease settling into his new home.
Guangdong
Li was promoted to the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party in 1997, largely due to having secured the patronage of the paramount leader and Party General Secretary Jiang Zemin. In his memoirs, Li said that he was surprised at having been appointed to the Politburo. During the 1997 Asian financial crisis, Li set up a special task force to evaluate what to do with non-performing loans owed by two of the province's largest financial companies. He appointed former central bank deputy governor Wang Qishan to oversee the task force. Li shook up the local banking sector and closed a plethora of local credit unions and agencies.
Politburo Standing Committee
As expected, Li was named a member of the Politburo Standing Committee after Jiang's departure as General Secretary of the CCP in 2002. By then, Li was seen by political observers as firmly belonging to Jiang's camp. He was considered one of Jiang's major 'patronage appointments' to the top ruling council along with other staunch Jiang loyalists such as Jia Qinglin and Huang Ju. Li was ranked eighth in the party hierarchy out of the nine members of the new PSC, given the portfolio of supervising the Party organs that dealt with propaganda and ideology while taking on no other official party or state titles. In addition, Li was elevated from eight position in the protocol sequence to fifth, in front of Hu Jintao's putative successor Xi Jinping.
There were high hopes among some in media circles that Li would signal a more liberal change from the strictures of former propaganda chief Ding Guangen. Li had made a major speech advocating that media stay "close to the public" and to real events, "instead of mechanically following Party directives." In addition, Li was also seen as a leading reformer due to his legacy in Guangdong, where he was not afraid to take on entrenched interests and introduce further market economic reforms. The hopes were short-lived however, though, after the Central Publicity Department began closing newspapers, firing journalists, and would not allow foreign companies to produce content for TV stations in China. Many editors were punished and Li Changchun "started sounding and acting like another Ding Guangen." Li approved the construction of the National Museum in 2006 after a series of disputes and delays about the building of the museum. He was the guest of honor at the opening of the National Center for the Performing Arts.
Li has put his support behind a number of creative projects that might otherwise have been censored by the government. He supported Zen Shaolin, a music, dance and martial arts show intended to increase tourism that opened in 2007 in Henan, despite the producers' concerns that a celebration of religion and sacred music would be opposed by the government. Li allowed a 2009 movie Nanking! Nanking! by Lu Chuan to continue running in theaters in the face of strong pressure from nationalists who objected to the sympathetic characterization in the film of a Japanese soldier. The film was one of ten chosen to help commemorate 60th anniversary of the People's Republic of China.
In May 2009, American diplomats reported in a cable that was later leaked that Li was a driving force behind China's renewed pressure against Google to comply with Chinese censorship laws. Li was reportedly unhappy that Chinese Google search results for his and his children's names contained results critical of them. He subsequently ordered major Chinese firms to cease doing business with Google, and one source with connections to political elite claimed Li had directed a subsequent cyberattack against Google in retaliation. In 2009, at a theoretical seminar to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the 3rd plenary session of the 11th CCP Central Committee, Li coined the Six Why's, insisting on the political primacy of the CCP. The Six Why's was seen as a counterattack against Premier Wen Jiabao's speech in support of universal values.
In June 2012, Li gave a speech to a political theories seminar, where he emphasized the importance of popularizing Chinese-style Marxism, saying it was important to "enhance public faith in the country’s political theory amid social conflict" and to "to answer the public’s doubts, reach a consensus and generate strength".
Li retired from PSC in 2012, when Liu Yunshan succeeded his position as the propaganda chief.
Personal life
Li is married to Zhang Shurong (), his college sweetheart. Zhang was an engineer.