China Ousts Acting Culture Minister in Shuffle of Government Hard-Liners

China’s hard-line acting minister of culture, He Jingzhi, has been ousted, an official newspaper in Beijing reported Sunday. His removal completes a shuffle that ousted hard-liners from three top ideological posts, from which they had enforced harsh political controls after the army’s crackdown on the pro-democracy movement in June, 1989.

Their replacements, while far from liberal, are more moderate figures who are less tainted by the wave of ideological repression that followed the crackdown.

He, a leftist writer, had overseen a Culture Ministry purge of many employees suspected of supporting the Tian An Men Square protest movement. He has been replaced as acting minister by Liu Zhongde, deputy head of the Propaganda Department, according to the edition delivered Sunday of the weekly Literature and Art newspaper.

He had lost his position on the Communist Party’s Central Committee at a party congress in October, along with two other hard-line ideologues, Propaganda Department head Wang Renzhi and People’s Daily Director Gao Di. It had been rumored since spring that the three would lose their jobs this year.

Official media reported several weeks ago that Wang has been replaced by Politburo member Ding Guangen, known to be a favorite bridge partner of senior leader Deng Xiaoping, the architect of China’s market-oriented economic reforms.

Wang had something of a soft landing, moving to become party secretary of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a less influential post.

Gao was replaced in November by Shao Huaze, a former army propagandist who had been serving since the 1989 crackdown as the official party newspaper’s editor in chief. Under Gao’s leadership, the paper had been slow to show enthusiasm for a call to accelerate economic reform that Deng issued during a trip to south China early this year.