Making Waves, Carefully, on the Air in China

"The path of China's political development is toward greater democracy, toward greater openness," he said in a moment of candor. "China's leaders know this. They may not want to think about it, but it's an objective problem in front of them.

"I often discuss these questions with very high-level leaders. The Western parliamentary method is impossible now. I think a system like the Taiwan elections, like South Korea, like Japan, it's all impossible.

"China is so big, with 800 million, even 900 million people who are illiterate," he added, overstating the official Chinese figure by a factor of 10. "If you adopt earth-shaking ideas of democratic reform in an instant, it won't work. I sincerely believe this. China must move toward democracy. I'm sincere about that, too. But as to speed, as to method, I feel we can't entirely copy the West's speed and the West's methods."

Pressed to say if he supported the one-party system, Liu hesitated and asked to respond in writing. A week later, he sent an answer that demonstrated the political skill -- some say slipperiness -- that has taken him so far.

"Regarding 'one-party rule,' it depends on how you look at it," he wrote in an e-mail. "Ordinarily, 'one-party rule' is connected to dictatorship and being closed off. China now is still under 'one-party rule,' but is it a dictatorship? Is it closed? I think no one can rule like a dictator now or close off China again, because the larger environment won't allow it."

"I think Phoenix can play a role in promoting the construction of China's democratic system," he added, "but it must be orderly and gradual."

A Rising Star

At an early age, Liu understood both the benefits and risks of working with the Communist Party. The son of party officials who had access to a car and a swimming pool, he enjoyed a relatively comfortable childhood.

But in Mao Zedong's repressive Cultural Revolution of the 1960s and 1970s, his parents were denounced as political criminals and sent to labor camps. At age 15, Liu watched as his father was paraded through the western city of Lanzhou wearing a dunce cap. At 19, he sought refuge from the chaos by enlisting in the People's Liberation Army.

Liu said he spent the next decade in units assigned to build roads and provide disaster relief. But he embraced the party, writing for military newspapers in his free time. "It was all essays about studying the works of Mao, or reports about troops reading Engels and Marx," he recalled. "But people thought I was a genius."

After the Cultural Revolution ended, Liu landed an assignment in Beijing as a military journalist with Central People's Radio. In the more progressive 1980s, he pushed for live coverage of China's first rocket launches, arguing against those worried about broadcasting a potential failure, one colleague recalled. Another remembered that Liu insisted on covering a submarine test from aboard the vessel.

If Liu favored openness, he never put his career at risk. He produced propaganda, was promoted to management of the radio station and developed a reputation as a reporter who excelled at befriending senior officials.

Wu Xiaoyong, a colleague who ran China's main English radio service and the son of the foreign minister at the time, remembers Liu asking for a favor in 1987. He wanted to cover a visit to the United States by Yang Shangkun, the powerful military official who was deputy to the Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping. Wu secured him a place on the trip. "He got to know Yang Shangkun very well," Wu recalled. "Yang liked him a lot, and his children became his personal friends."