Insatiable in learning for 30 years
Guangping Liu, director of the general office of GAC,graduated in 1970s
Guangping Liu was born in 1954. In 1973, he was recruited to Guangzhou Customs. Then, he joined cadre training class in UIBE to learn English from 1975 to 1977. After years of hard work in Guangzhou Customs, he was enrolled as a postgraduate by Party School of Guangdong province in 1977 and graduated in 2000. Since 1991, he successively served as Deputy Commissioner of Guangzhou Customs, Commissioner of Shantou Customs, Chief of Tariff Department in General Administration of Customs. In January 2004, he took the post of director of the general office.
Student of customs’ cadre training class in 1975
Interviewing with Guangping Liu, the author can feel his love for customs and passion for life. All the people who are familiar with him say that he is very good at studying. The most important beginning of his study was cadre training class in UIBE.
In 1975, customs was only an office under the Ministry of Foreign Trade. In order to cultivate a group of cadres who knew foreign language, General Director, Jianbai Zhu decided to select young customs officers to learn English in UIBE for 2 years. Guangping Liu became a member of the first cadre training class. Five people among the 50 students were from Guangdong Customs.
Students should have registered in early September. However, Luohe (a city in Henan province) was subject to floods and traffic was paralyzed, so the term was delayed in one month. After the assessment test of English, all the 50 students were divided into 3 classes. Liu was in the faster class, and served as the study commissary later.
The first cadre training class was attached with great importance and equipped with excellent teaching staff. Teachers were professor Guopei Gao and Yujiang Wang. The training materials were also specially developed by professor Gao. All the students worked very hard in and out of class. At that time, English teaching focused on listening and speaking, from which Liu benefited a lot in his future career.
After graduated from the cadre training class in summer 1977, Guangping Liu started working in General Administration of Customs. He was often responsible for translation and interpretation because of his English language proficiency. For some time, he kept reciting English dictionaries for fun. Until now, translation is still one of his hobbies. He even organized the translation and proofread Harmonized Commodity Description and Coding System, an important reference book in customs operation.
All the students in cadre training class had a promising career future because of the solid foundation of English, among whom were two deputy directors Kenong Li and Songpu Sun, several directors general lile Guangping Liu, Zhiqiang Long, Yuguang Liu, Gugang Wang and many business backbones in customs.
Never bored with customs duties
With the rapid development of China Customs, the staff quality is increasingly demanding. Although Liu didn’t receive high education, he insisted in learning from practice. For a long time, his record of formal schooling stayed at the cadre training class of UIBE. Until 1997, when he was serving as Deputy Commissioner of Guangzhou Customs, he passed the examination and was enrolled by Party School Guangdong Province as a postgraduate, majoring economy. Liu sought neither fame nor promotion, but kept learning from practice and got rewarded.
Liu Guangping has been engaged in customs duties for a long time, before coming to General Administration of Customs in 2004, he hadn’t been out of tariff business. Customs business is like vast sea, while tariff, the axis. Speaking of tariffs, Liu Guangping had lots of feelings. He said: "There were customs office from Zhou Dynasty in China. In ancient time, checkpoints were also responsible for collecting taxes. However, it was completely different from modern customs. The function of modern customs is to protect a country’s economic and political interests, not only for financial purposes, but also a means of international trade struggle. In the work of customs, the tariff is the most theoretical, technical, systematic powerful function, also the core function."
Liu was interested in and quite familiar with customs, but he thought that tariff were also facing new challenges. He said: "Nowadays, tariff has become a means of economic struggle between countries. Customs business contains three parts which are most and technical: classification, price-verification and certificate of origin, among which, commodity classification is the most basic, while price-verification, the most difficult to manage and certificate of origin, the most comprehensive. With the global economic integration and the continuous development of foreign trade, customs is also facing with more and more challenges. I am afraid that it’s impossible for me to solve the problem that how to serve economy and politics using customs for a lifetime.”
Learn philosophy to improve politic accomplishment
There was a banner on the wall in Liu’s office, saying that fairness brings brightness, and incorruption produces authority. Liu’s father wrote him this motto, which let him know that fairness and incorruption were of great importance working in customs.
Liu was good at combining study and work and serious about political studies. He combined political theory, the pursuit of and ideals and beliefs, customs and practices with political civilization construction. In his view, both business skills and strong political quality were double requirements for qualified customs officials. As a customs cadre for many years, especially dealing with regional customs work, he often faced with conflicts between national interest, local interest and company interest. Faced with increasingly complex situations, how could customs find the balance point between guarding the pass for the country and service economy? How to satisfy central and local governments, enterprises and people at the same time? This new topic was often lingering in his mind. Therefore he felt that philosophical was thinking more and more important.
Liu was more and more interested in philosophy as he aged: "Philosophy emphasizes the basic universal law of social development, thus it can help us capture the essence of complicated things. For example, China’s customs summarized the working law that rule by law; guard the pass for the country; serve the economy and promote the development from decades’ working experience. During the early days of PRC, the state implemented self-reliance principle and closed the borders, for external reasons like the blockage from imperialist. Thus customs played a very slight role and even tariffs was abolished at that time. After the reforms and opening up, the General Administration of Customs was independent from the Ministry of Foreign trade. However, customs regarded political security as priority, only guarding the pass rather than serving the people. In order to reverse the situation, the General Administration of Customs proposed the promotion policy, changing ideas of customs staff who started to work actively rather than passively. However, due to partial understanding of the policy, a few people started corrupting and bribery in the name of policy. In order to stop this unhealthy tendencies, the administration proposed the working law, “rule by law and guard the pass for the country”. Although this policy did play a positive role, it was neither dialectical nor comprehensive. The new guiding principles suggested that customs was more mature. Customs staff realized that administration according to law was the basis and premise; guarding the pass and providing service were two basic functions; the purpose is to promote development, which were in line with dialectics and current reality. However, different customs still had to find the balance point according to their actual conditions.
Service is also a science
Guangping Liu was promoted earlier than many other young cadres in customs system.In 1984, after transferring back from the General Administration of Customs, he worked in Guangzhou Customs as Deputy Director and then Director in 1986. He was prompted as the Deputy Commissioner in 1991,and became the youngest senior supervisor in customs system.
In January 2004, Liu took the post of director of general office. His focus also transferred from operational to comprehensive work, which he hadn’t contacted over the past 30 years. Now, he had to be extremely careful towards his new work and regarded it as another opportunity to learn serious attitude, coordination, communication, and written skills. He found that he should put himself in a correct position rather than a boss to do a great job. The general office had four major functions: staff, assistants, coordination and service. In Liu’s view, the General Administration should pay more attention to strengthen "coordination" and "service" function according to the actual conditions, especially establishing service consciousness. In order to do good job in the future, he reviewed the working process with colleagues and summarized 3 consciousness, 4 spirits and 5 abilities. Three consciousness meant serving department leadership, general administration and local customs. Four spirits consisted of perspective thinking, hardworking, self-discipline and contribution. Five abilities included the abilities to research, organize, manage, communicate and integrate.
Guangping Liu also served as the deputy director of Port Office and he found this work even more difficult for he didn’t have the experience organizing central ministries. In particular, he had to deal with hot and difficult topics with other departments. In order to do a great job, he had to establish service awareness. Service is also a science. If you served people well and they were moved, then the job would be easier.
He said: “I am not good at comprehensive work, but we have to exchange jobs inside customs. Therefore, I have to submit to the arrangement.” Although busy with such work he was not good at, he still did a good job with outgoing personality, full passion, positive attitude and efficient work style, which was contagious.
As a member in customs, Guangping Liu felt very proud of his occupation. He said that it was an excellent team and a noble profession. He had to keep learning in the future for the work was really challenging.
Now, Guangping Liu serves as the director of Guangdong branch office of the General Administration of Customs and Deputy Secretary of Party Committee.
