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 organised 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 commercialised, an achievement struck with minimal surrender of state control.