Liu Binyan (February 17, 1925-December 5, 2005) was a Chinese author and journalist, as well as a political dissident. February 17 is the 48th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 1925 (MCMXXV) was a common year starting on Thursday (link will take you to calendar). ... December 5 is the 339th day (340th in leap years) of the year in the Gregorian calendar. ... 2005 (MMV) is a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Liu Binyan's family was from Shandong province, was born in 1925, on the fifteenth of the first month of the lunar calendar, in the city of Changchun, Jilin Province, and grew up in Harbin in Heilongjiang Province, where he went to school until the ninth grade, after which he had to withdraw for lack of tuition money. He persisted in reading voraciously, especially works about World War II, and in 1944 joined the Communist Party of China. After 1949 he worked as a reporter and editor for China Youth News and began a long career of writing rooted in an iron devotion to social ideals, an affection for China's ordinary people, and an insistence on honest expression even at the cost of great personal sacrifice. Shandong (Simplified Chinese: 山东; Traditional Chinese: 山東; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Shan-tung) is a coastal province of eastern Peoples Republic of China. ... Location within China Changchun (Simplified Chinese: 长春; Traditional Chinese: 長春; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Chang-chun) is the capital and largest city of Jilin province, located at the northeast of the Peoples Republic of China. ... Jilin (Chinese: 吉林; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Chi-lin; Postal System Pinyin: Kirin), is a province of the Peoples Republic of China located in the northeastern part of the country. ... Harbin (Simplified Chinese: 哈尔滨; Traditional Chinese: 哈爾濱; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Ha-erh-pin; Russian Харби́н Kharbin) is a sub-provincial city and the capital of the Heilongjiang Province in north-east China. ... It has been suggested that Holungkiang be merged into this article or section. ... Communist Party of China flag The Communist Party of China (Simplified Chinese: 中国共产党; Traditional Chinese: 中國共産黨; pinyin: ) is the ruling party of the Peoples Republic of China. ...

In 1956 he published 《在桥梁工地上》 "Zai qiaoliang gongdi shang" [On the Bridge Worksite]," which exposed bureaucratism and corruption, and 《本报内部消息》 "Benbao neibu xiaoxi" [The Inside Story of Our Newspaper], about press control. The two works had a powerful nationwide impact among readers, but in the next year, 1957, Liu was labeled a "rightist" and expelled from the Communist Party. After being rehabilitated in the 1960s, he again fell out of favor in 1969 and was condemned to a laogai detention camp, where he spent eight years. After being rehabilitated again, he built up a sound reputation as a reformer and a corruption watchdog. From 1957 on, he spent roughly 21 years in and out of labor camps. 1969 (MCMLXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday For other uses, see Number 1969. ... Laogai (勞改; pinyin: láo găi), which means reform through labor, is a slogan of the Chinese criminal justice system and has been used to refer to the use of prison labor in the Peoples Republic of China. ...

In 1978, after the "rightist" label was removed, Liu was re-admitted to the Communist Party but continued, in even starker terms than before, to write "reportage literature" about injustices and the sufferings of ordinary people. 《人妖之间》"Renyao zhijian" [People or Monsters?] (1979), 《第二种忠诚》"Di-er zhong zhongcheng" [A Second Kind of Loyalty] (1985) and other works made his name a household word among Chinese readers and led to his reputation as "China's conscience." In 1985, when the Chinese Writers' Association was allowed (for the first and last time) to elect its own leaders, Liu Binyan received the second-highest number of votes to Ba Jin, the surviving May-Fourth era writer. Ba Jin in 1938 Li Yaotang (Chinese: 李尧棠, Zi: 芾甘, Feigan) (November 25, 1904 – October 17, 2005) is considered to be one of the most important and widely read Chinese writers of the twentieth century. ...

In January 1987, as part of Deng Xiaoping's crackdown on "bourgeois liberalism," Liu Binyan was again expelled from the Communist Party. In spring of 1988 he came to the United States for teaching and writing; then, after publicly denouncing the Chinese government for its Beijing massacre and nationwide crackdown in June, 1989, he was barred from return to China and has not been back since. Although largely separated from his Chinese readers, he continued to read and write about China, and to interview visitors from China, in every way he could. Deng Xiaoping Deng Xiaoping ▶(?) (Simplified Chinese: 邓小平; Traditional Chinese: 鄧小平; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Teng Hsiao-ping; August 22, 1904—February 19, 1997) was a revolutionary elder in the Communist Party of China (CPC) who served as the de facto ruler of the Peoples Republic of China from the late 1970s... ▶(?) (Chinese: 北京; pinyin: ; Wade-Giles: Pei-ching; Postal System Pinyin: Peking) is the capital of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). ...

He published articles critical of Chinese corruption for the Hong Kong media, and offered commentary for the U.S.-funded Radio Free Asia. Radio Free Asia was created by the International Broadcasting Act of 1994 and began its operations in 1996. ...

Weblinks

• The 'Conscience of China' is dead (Times; December 6th, 2005)
• Exiled Chinese writer Liu Binyan dead (UPI; December 6th, 2005)
• Leading Chinese dissident writer Liu Binyan dies at 80 (Japan Today; December 6th, 2005)
• China dissident Liu 'dies in US' The prominent Chinese dissident writer, Liu Binyan, has died at the age of 80 in the US, reports say. (BBC; December 5th, 2005)