New | Liu Tienan’s path from China’s top planner to prisoner for life

Over decades as a Chinese technocrat, Liu Tienan rose to become one of the top planners of the world’s second-largest economy, but was brought down by a former lover.

Even as deputy director of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), Liu – whose given name literally means “iron man” – was a bureaucrat with little or no public profile.

But all that changed when his mistress – identified only by her surname Xu – detailed shady business deals, fake academic credentials and death threats to Luo Changping, the deputy editor of business magazine Caijing.

Luo reported a litany of Xu’s accusations on his Weibo account, including that Liu had formed an “official-businessman alliance” with an entrepreneur, had sought an undeserved degree from a university and that Xu received death threats after the pair fell out.

Liu’s wife and son held shares in the businessman’s company, and Liu wired “huge amounts of money” into foreign currency accounts held his the son “multiple times”, the journalist added.

Luo was later moved to a different post in his organisation, but the Communist Party’s anti-corruption watchdog had already announced that Liu was being investigated for “grave violations of discipline”, which usually refers to corruption.