Profile: Liu Yunshan: Down-to-earth journalist joins CPC top leadership (4)

（Xinhua） 08:43, December 26, 2012

In this file photo taken on April 7, 2007, Liu Yunshan (R, front) learns about villagers' involvement in the artistic painting industry as he visits the studio of Wang Jianmin, a village painter who excels in drawing tigers, during an investigation and research tour in Wanggongzhuang Village of Minquan County, central China's Henan Province. (Xinhua/Cui Shenyi)

Before his promotion to head of the Publicity Department of the CPC Central Committee in 2002, Liu tempered himself in different posts successively as head of the Publicity Department of the CPC Inner Mongolia Autonomous Regional Committee, Party chief of Chifeng City and deputy Party chief of Inner Mongolia.

He was elected a member of the Political Bureau and the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee in 2002.

Liu's passion for ordinary people and communities has stayed with him over the years despite his transition in roles from a journalist to a senior official.

He preferred to investigate the ideological work in rural areas on his own, by train, by bus, or even hitchhiking by tractor to the homes and tents of farmers and herdsmen when he was in charge of publicity of Inner Mongolia in 1986.

"You only get words from the heart when you stay with the people," Liu once explained. "To me, it's a happy thing to hear the truth from the people."