ABSTRACT
Having a fluent reading knowledge of Japanese, English, and Russian, Liu was already an accomplished Communist party journalist and member of the new establishment when he was purged as a rightist in the campaign of 1957, not to be rehabilitated until 1979. He reappeared on the literary scene with a vengeance in his long reportage piece Ren yao zhi jian (People or monsters? 1979), about pervasive corruption in Manchuria. As special correspondent for the People's Daily, Liu Binyan became the "conscience of the nation" because of his willingness to speak the truth. In the years following, he remained constantly under attack by the old guard. Ultimately, he was expelled from the Communist party (and its organ, the People's Daily) in January 1987, called a spiritual coinstigator of the student protests for democracy in December 1986. Nevertheless, he retained his position as vice-chairman of the Chinese Writers' Association (elected by the membership of writers instead of appointed from above, in a leadership selection process that was itself a sign of the liberalization of the times). Due to all the official criticism of his activities, Liu Binyan's writings were never assembled for republication in China; in 1988, however, Hong Kong's Xiangjiang Press brought out a two-volume selection entitled Liu Binyan yanlunji (Speeches and articles by Liu Binyan) that if anything portrays Liu Binyan in an even more revealing way than do his famous reportage pieces.
