News reports about former propaganda czar Liu Yunshan visiting two Guangdong cities earlier toured by Chinese President Xi Jinping have sparked fresh speculation about the retired top official’s next moves.

Liu, previously one of China’s seven most powerful men who sat on the Politburo Standing Committee between 2012 and 2017, was recently pictured walking along a street in Chaozhou accompanied by the city’s mayor He Xiaojun. He also visited neighboring Shantou city, according to mainland news reports.

The 73-year-old has mostly faded from public view since his retirement in 2019. He is regarded as a close aide to former president Jiang Zemin.

The two southern cities are barely linked to the political career of Liu, who spent his early days in his native Inner Mongolia before being promoted as a propaganda official within the central government in Beijing in 1993.

But the timing of his trip, which came two months after Xi visited Chaozhou and Shantou in October, triggered talk that the retiree was displaying loyalty to the president by retracing his steps in Guangdong province. Observers in China believed that Liu’s tour was a result of careful political calculation.

During his term in the Politburo Standing Committee, Liu was entangled in controversy after foreign media circulated a list which purportedly showed the scale of properties and other assets owned by the seven top leaders on the committee. Liu was rumored to own tens of billions of yuan in assets, including many coal and mineral mines in Inner Mongolia.

In February, Inner Mongolia launched a major corruption crackdown that dug up cases of bribery and collusion with mine owners over the past two decades. The crackdown led to the suspension of a number of local officials and was said to have sent shockwaves across top leaders who had mining interests in the northern autonomous region.

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