Member, 18th CPC Central Committee and part of the Secretariat. Member of Politburo 2012 and promoted to head of Propaganda Department in November 2012.

Spent 30 years working in Anhui. Has Communist Youth League experience (Cheng Li thinks Liu is one of Hu’s closest Youth League friends). Work history includes being deputy editor-in-chief of People’s Daily.

In 2006 became Party chief of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and succeeded Du Qinglin (UFWD) as Party Secretary of Sichuan Province in December 2007.

Was a “sent-down youth” who during the Cultural Revolution were rusticated as teenagers, from cities to the countryside to do manual labor for years.

In December 2010, leader-in-waiting Xi Jinping gave a speech listing “decades of work experience in less well-off places” as one of a number of desirable qualification for personnel who might be promoted in 2012. In writing about this speech on 23 December, Ming Pao commentator Sun Chia-yeh pointed out that Liu Qibao would fulfil this criterion.

As Sichuan Party Secretary Liu was brought into the Tibet Work Leading Group in 2010, when the Fifth Tibet Work Forum decided to incorporate the Tibetan areas of Sichuan, Qinghai, Gansu and Yunnan into its remit.

• Liu, quoted by State Media addressing a forum in 2011 “Speaking the truth — these are the best words you can use” … “If you want the people to tell you the truth, then officials have to be brave enough to hear the truth, and they must create the right conditions for it.” (Reuters, October 2012)
• Cheng Li 2010: Sichuan Party Secretary Liu Qibao and Shandong Party Secretary Jiang Yikang hold the top positions in two of the most important provinces in the country. Both have broad leadership experience within the central government, and they are among the leading candidates for the next Politburo. (Note contrast with Willy Lam’s view below.)
• Willy Lam, Jamestown: “a large number of Youth League heavyweights have proven to be lackluster cadres who owe their rise to patronage rather than performance. Examples include the party secretaries of Tibet, Xinjiang, Sichuan and Shanxi…Liu Qibao together with his predecessor Du Qinglin has been faulted for the large number of shoddily constructed buildings that collapsed during the Sichuan Earthquake last year.
• World Socialist Web Site 2007: reported riots and crackdowns in Guangxi about the one- child policy: “Responsibility for the riots, however, rests squarely with the Chinese government. Liu Qibao, the provincial party boss in Guangxi, is a rising political star, closely associated with Hu Jintao’s party faction. Since his appointment…he has become well known for aggressive policies aimed at making the province “economically competitive”. At a family planning conference in February, he gave a “yellow card” warning to the Bobai authorities for falling behind in meeting the quotas of the one child policy. In order to clear the “yellow card” by August, officials in Bobai County and their superiors in the regional centre of Yulin city implemented a repressive campaign of forced sterilization of women and property confiscation in lieu of fines. Between February 6 and April 10, Yulin carried out 48,554 sterilisations and collected some 27.6 million yuan (about $US3.5 million) in fines. The local Guangxi Daily praised the Yulin city government and hailed the one child policy as a positive factor for “social harmony”.

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