China's propaganda tsar enjoyed meteoric rise

BEIJING (Reuters) - Technocrat turned ideology tsar Li Changchun enjoyed a meteoric rise through the bruising arena of Chinese politics through skilful patronage and despite a provincial scandal involving massive AIDS infections.

Under Li's watch as Party chief of the impoverished central province of Henan in the 1990s, tens of thousands of poor farmers contracted HIV/AIDS through schemes in which people sold blood to unsanitary, often state-run clinics.

Li, 63, survived and in 2002 was promoted to China's pinnacle of power -- the all-powerful Politburo Standing Committee -- under the auspices of Jiang Zemin, the predecessor of President Hu Jintao. On Monday, he was re-elected.

Not long after he was first promoted, Li went on a tour of top state-controlled media and encouraged more open reporting on disasters in stark contrast to past practice. But the opening was followed by a clampdown on publishing and tight controls on the Internet.

A trained engineer, Li cut his political teeth in the northeastern rustbelt province of Liaoning in the 1980s. His success spearheading industry reform saw the then 39-year-old promoted to mayor of Shenyang, the youngest man to head a provincial capital.

Before the age of 50, Li had governed Liaoning and Henan, and was subsequently hand-picked as party chief of Guangdong, a hot-bed of smuggling and organized crime in the late 1990s.

Li's efforts to clean up the freewheeling southern province extended as far as the bedroom, analysts say, where he led a campaign against businessmen keeping mistresses.

Since joining the Standing Committee, Li has been given the task of pushing Communist ideology in a country undergoing rapid economic and social change.

Under his watch, China's bloated media sector has gradually been weaned off state subsidies and commercialized, an achievement struck with minimal surrender of state control.

Lately, Li has appeared at the vanguard of efforts to secure fuel for China's energy-hungry economy, criss-crossing the globe to meet Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez and other powerbrokers of resource-rich countries in South America and Africa.

But as with other Chinese leaders, little is known about a man whose public appearances are mostly at official functions.

Those who have met him say Li, a heavy-set man who wears thick, old-fashioned glasses, exudes self-confidence and determination leavened with the occasional flash of humor.

In 2002, analysts said Li's trump card lay in his relationship with Jiang, who continued to wield power through his many allies at the pinnacle of the Party leadership.

With Jiang's influence fading in the upper echelons of power, Li has been careful to mouth President Hu's policy rhetoric in public speeches.