[3] In 1956, he published "On the Bridge Worksite" (《在桥梁工地上》 "Zai qiaoliang gongdi shang"), which exposed bureaucratism and corruption, and "The Inside Story of Our Newspaper" ( 《本报内部消息》 "Benbao neibu xiaoxi"), about press control.
According to Liu, "'On the Bridge Construction Site' had been the first piece to criticize the Party itself since Mao Zedong had laid down the dictum in 1942 in his 'Talks at the Yan'an Forum' that writers should 'extol the bright side of life' and 'not expose' the darkness.
In 1978, after the "rightist" label was removed, Liu was re-admitted to the CCP but continued, in even starker terms than before, to write "reportage literature" (baogao wenxue) about injustices and the sufferings of ordinary people.
"[4] People or Monsters was the first in a series of works describing corruption and social problems, and was noteworthy for its use of fact-based reporting (reportage) in place of pure fiction.
[1]: 138 "Di'erzhong Zhongcheng"(《第二种忠诚》)[A Second Kind of Loyalty] (1985) and other essays made him a household name among Chinese readers and cemented his reputation as "China's conscience."
[citation needed] In December 1986, college students demonstrated in over a dozen Chinese cities in order to demand greater economic and political freedoms.
In spring of 1988 he came to the United States for teaching and writing; then, after publicly denouncing the Chinese government for the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and massacre, he was barred from returning to China and never saw his homeland again.