Liu Binyan - Liu in The United States

Liu in The United States

In December 1986, college students demonstrated in a over a dozen Chinese cities in order to agitate for greater economic and political freedoms. Deng Xiaoping, after two straight weeks of student demonstrations, believed that the student movement was a result of "bourgeois liberalization"，and named 3 Communist Party members to be expelled, including Fang Lizhi, Liu Binyan, and Wang Ruowang. Deng directed then-CCP General Secretary Hu Yaobang to expel them from the Party, but Hu refused. Because of his refusal, Hu was dismissed from his position as General Secretary, effectively ending his period of influence within the Chinese government.

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 the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, he was barred from returning to China and never saw his homeland again. Although largely isolated from his Chinese readers, he continued to write about China where his sources often came from interviewing visitors from China.

He published articles critical of Chinese corruption for the Hong Kong media, and offered commentary for the U.S. government funded Radio Free Asia (nonetheless, he was reported to "detest American capitalism" and expressed dismay at a certain Chinese dissident's support for the Iraq war). Until the end, he remained an adherent of socialism with a human face, was critical of social inequality and consumerist cynicism in China, and stressed that the Communist Party of China, which he had joined as a youth, had many positive achievements before the Maoist crimes and its transformation into the "foul, reactionary force" that it was today.

He died in East Windsor, New Jersey on December 5, 2005 from complications due to colon cancer. He is survived by his wife, Zhu Hong.