The senior management of the Chinese Communist Party’s mouthpiece People’s Daily has changed, with Yu Shaoliang taking over as the president, replacing Tuo Zhen. Tuo Zhen was a controversial figure due to his crackdown on the outspoken Southern Weekend newspaper.
According to the “Leadership Introduction” section of the People’s Daily website, Yu Shaoliang has been appointed as the president and editor-in-chief of the People’s Daily. The former president of the People’s Daily was Tuo Zhen.
Public records show that the 60-year-old Yu Shaoliang has worked for over 30 years in the Chinese Xinhua News Agency, serving in various positions such as assistant president of the Hebei branch of Xinhua News Agency, director of the news editing department, vice president, president, and Party Secretary of the Shaanxi branch, director of the office and director of the personnel department of Xinhua News Agency, vice president of Xinhua News Agency, Standing Committee member and Minister of Organization Department of the Hubei Provincial Committee, etc. In 2018, Yu Shaoliang was transferred to the Standing Committee and Minister of the Organization Department of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China. In 2020, he served as Deputy Secretary of the Shanghai municipal Party committee, Minister of the Organization Department, and Secretary of the Political and Legal Commission. He was appointed as the editor-in-chief of the People’s Daily in February 2022. He is a member of the 20th Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party of China.
Tuo Zhen, who has been removed from his position, was born in 1959 and is now 65 years old. He was previously accused of suppressing press freedom to show loyalty to Xi Jinping.
After the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Tuo Zhen made a tough stance in handling the “Southern Weekend New Year’s Greetings” incident.
At the end of 2012, the Southern Weekend prepared a draft of the New Year’s greetings titled “Chinese Dream, Constitutional Dream,” which involved constitutional issues in many places. Despite extensive revisions internally, the draft still could not pass the Party’s top-level censorship. In early January 2013, Luo Changping, deputy editor of “Caijing” magazine, and a reporter from the Southern Weekend at the time revealed that Tuo Zhen, then Minister of the Guangdong Provincial Propaganda Department, forcibly edited the Southern Weekend’s New Year’s greetings, leading to the emergence of serious errors in the edited content.
This incident caused a huge uproar and even led to editors and reporters signing a public letter of protest. In the end, many senior executives of the Southern Weekend were replaced. Tuo Zhen, on the other hand, continued to rise through the ranks, becoming Deputy Minister of the Central Propaganda Department in June 2015, and was transferred to the position of editor-in-chief of the People’s Daily in March 2018. On October 20, 2020, he took over as the president of the People’s Daily until his recent resignation.
Beijing veteran media personality Gao Yu once told Radio Free Asia that because the authorities wanted the “party media to have the party’s attributes,” Tuo Zhen’s crackdown on the Southern Weekend was considered a great achievement by the authorities.