Liu Yuan was born in 1951 in Beijing, the son of
Liu Shaoqi, a
Chinese Communist Party (CCP) revolutionary and former
president of China, and
Wang Guangmei, a multilingual interpreter who also worked for the CCP. In 2010, Liu wrote the preface to a friend's book titled
Changing Our View of Culture and History, which has aroused notice for criticizing recent Party leadership and calls for the rejection of foreign models and a return to a supposed upright military heritage. Wall Street Journalists believe Liu is politically close to other "
princelings", especially
Xi Jinping, the
General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. Despite media speculation that he would take on the post of the Central Military Commission's new Discipline Inspection Commission, Liu Yuan retired in December 2015. Regarding his retirement, Liu said, "I will be the last political commissar of the Logistics Department... I will absolutely obey the military reforms [of Xi Jinping]." Liu was a member of the
17th and the
18th Central Committees of the Chinese Communist Party. ==References==