He is the son of Liu Haibin (刘海滨), a Red Army veteran, and the son-in-law of Hu Yaobang, former General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party.

[1][2][3] In 1968, at the height of the Cultural Revolution, Liu was forced to work on a rural commune in Xixiang County, Shaanxi, as an "educated youth".

[4] Liu entered the PLA Ground Force in 1970 as a soldier in the railroad corps, and was eventually made a platoon leader.

Soon afterwards, Liu was appointed head of a special investigative task force for the navy following the Yuanhua case, a major corruption scandal that implicated hundreds of CCP personnel, including GPD Intelligence Chief General Ji Shengde.

In Li Manmei's 2005 memoir about her father, she recounts how Liu joined her three brothers in carrying wreathes for the December 1990 ceremony at which Hu's ashes were interred.