Liu Binyan , the mainland author and journalist known as 'China's conscience' because of his honest critiques of corruption in the Communist Party and press censorship, died in the US early yesterday. He was 80.
A relative reached by phone at Liu's home in East Windsor, New Jersey, said Liu had had cancer.
Liu was a prominent political dissident who portrayed the dark side of the Communist Party through loosely fictional accounts of corruption, media censorship and party incompetence.
He was denounced, twice expelled from the party and sent to labour camps for his provocative works, before being permanently exiled from China.
One of his most celebrated works was an investigative piece called People or Monsters?, which told the story of a corrupt, middle-aged female cadre in a small county in northeast Heilongjiang province .
Liu used the story to illustrate the widespread problem of official graft in the 1970s.
His book, A Second Kind of Loyalty, was the first of its kind to question whether there should be unconditional obedience of the Communist Party in the 1980s. He also wrote his autobiography, A Higher Kind of Loyalty, before the Tiananmen Square demonstrations.