DALIAN, China - The Fang Yonggang inspirational message went out loud and clear from the Communist Party Working Committee in Dalian's crowded Renminlu neighborhood.

"We should earnestly organize party members, officials and people who live in this neighborhood to study the advanced achievements of Comrade Fang Yonggang," read a written notice circulated to local government offices, businesses and apartment buildings. "We should learn from Fang's spirit of studying party doctrine and exploring the truth."

The directive on Fang was one cog in a national campaign launched recently by the Communist Party's Central Propaganda Department in Beijing. President Hu Jintao personally endorsed the campaign by visiting the ailing Fang in a hospital room and, ina front-page article in the official People's Daily newspaper on April 6, urging party members and soldiers to "learn from Fang

But who exactly was Fang Yonggang? Hardly anyone knew.

Fang, 44, a slight, bespectacled professor at the Naval Academy in Dalian, in northeastern China, became the latest in a long list of figures drawn from relative obscurity by the Communist Party's propaganda apparatus and thrust before the Chinese people as a role model. For example, more than 40 years ago, a soldier named Lei Feng was celebrated as a model squad leader for his truck-driving prowess. More recently, a bus driver named Bi Xiuli won praise forhelping passengers selflessly as she navigated around Beijing.

The enduring use of study campaigns and role models, sometimes with the help of fictional embellishments, illustrates the party's abiding determination to mold public opinion in China, hiding inconvenient truths through censorship and creating useful truths through the promotion of popular legends. Since coming to power in 1949, the party has made this two-pronged control of information one of its principal weapons in retaining a monopoly on power.

A hero for more modern times
Fang is something new in that long history, a hero for more modern times. According to the official plotline, he has been singled out, not for blue-collar exploits like Bi Xiuli's, but for tirelessly explaining modern party doctrine to ordinary people. In the words of an editorial in the People's Daily, he found a way to transmit "the boundless charisma of the party's new theory" to the masses, particularly those who have doubts aboutcommunism in a time of rapid modernization and raw capitalism.

Li Changchun, who handles propaganda on the Politburo's all-powerful Standing Committee, made comments underlining Fang's knack for helping common people understand the apparent contradiction after visiting him April 8 in a Beijing military hospital, where Fang was being treated for cancer.

Officials at Li's Central Propaganda Department refused requests for an interview to provide further explanation, and declined to make Fang, his relatives or his associates available. But the attention lavished on Fang by Hu, Li and their propaganda machinery suggested a high level of concern over the ideological doubts that have arisen as socialism fades from China's economy.

As China's 1.3 billion people become better-educated and more used to thinking for themselves, the impact of such campaigns appears to have diminished. For that reason, perhaps, they have become less frequent. Although Central China Television and the government-controlled press have devoted generous time and space to Fang and his teachings over the last couple of months, Chinese who are not party activistslong ago learned to tune out when the propaganda begins and have no idea what the campaign is about.

The official press said "people from all walks of life" across China were heeding Hu's call to study Fang's writings. But of 25 people interviewed at random this week in two Beijing middle-class neighborhoods, only three recognized the name Fang Yonggang. "Is he Chinese?" asked a gray-haired woman enjoying the morning sun on a park bench.

A senior propaganda official, after extolling Fang's virtues for several minutes as a model for the people, acknowledged that he himself was not really familiar with Fang's teachings. "I have not yet mastered them," he said.

Even here in Dalian, where Fang taught, mention of his name can draw blank stares.

"I never heard of him," said Sun Fuhao, 21, a wispy young Dalian native selling newspapers just across the street from the building where the Renminluneighborhood's Communist Party Working Committee drafted its April 19 directive.

Lessons in mobilization
Still, the party, with about 70 million members nationwide, has retained the ability to mobilize its own. In compulsory study sessions, information about Fang's life and teachings has been distributed across numerous levels of party organizations. As a mobilizing tool, the campaign seems to have found some meaning.

Guo Xuan, who supervises ethics instruction at the Dongshen Special School for Handicapped Children in Dalian, said teachers there began studying Fang soon after the campaign was launched in Beijing. Every Wednesday, the staff gathers to discuss problems and study theory, she said, and the school's party secretary has distributed newspaper articles about Fang's exploits.

"Many of our teachers were touched by his story," Guo said. "The thing that interested me was that he was from a farming background, and it was through the party that he was able to make his achievements. I can't say much about his theory, but I know we shouldearn from his spirit."Yan Guohua, who sat like a teller behind Window 26, labeled "Spiritual Civilization," at the Renminlu community government headquarters, said she helped put out the directive on studying Fang on orders from above. But she and others had already heard of him, she said, because of his work in Dalian and surrounding farmlands in Liaoning province, where according to party officials he has given more than 400 speeches over the years.

Yan said she vaguely remembers attending a lecture by Fang two years ago along with about 300 other city and party functionaries. "But I don't really remember what it was about," she added.

According to official accounts, Fang was born into a poor farming family in Liaoning province, about 250 miles northeast of Beijing. His family's life was turned around, the story goes, by the third plenary session of the 11th Party Congress in December 1978. To those familiar with party affairs, that means the time when Deng Xiaoping launched economic reforms that provided room for private enterprise in China and opened the country to foreign investment."This date became a big holiday for Fang Yonggang's family because from then on, their life was totally changed and they didn't have to worry about food any more," the official New China News Agency reported. "Fang was clear that all these changes were due to the good theory and good policy of the party."

Twenty-nine years later, as party factions line up for the 17th Party Congress in the fall, Fang's story has served as a dramatic endorsement of the value of Deng's reforms. Not incidentally, it has also provided valuable ammunition for Hu against conservative party theorists who are calling for a brake on reforms to protect workers thrown off the job or farmers who lose their fields to construction projects.

Party proselytizer
According to the official biography, Fang got his start as a party proselytizer in the 1990s when he overheard a man on a bus complaining that China's future was dark after the fall of the Soviet Union. He engaged the man in an argument, the biography goes, and convinced him that the new party theory allowing a market economy would keep the country strong.

To a retired official in Dalian who later asked Fang whether the new doctrine was really genuine socialism, he replied that it was socialism for a new era and would have to evolve further over time. "The reason why the party's innovative theory is scientific," he said, "is that in nature, the two theories can not only be traced to the same origin but also are innovated with the development of the era. Socialism with Chinese characteristics is a long essay."

Fang grew to be a favorite with his students at the Naval Academy, always taking time to clear up their doubts, the sanctioned story goes.

During one lecture, Fang was asked why, if China is still socialist, there is such a large gap between rich and poor. "Under the current special situation," he replied, "we need some people to get rich first so they can act as the locomotive and lead the whole nation. Our train is too long, however, and now the last car might have just left the station."

In explaining China's economic imbalance at a recent news conference, Premier Wen Jiabao used the same imagery.

Beginning last year, Fang's lecture, teaching and writing schedule began to tire him, family members said. He was operated on last November, and cancer was diagnosed. As he struggled with the illness, Dalian party officials said, he found time to read 43 books and write a new textbook on "the scientific development concept," a political slogan adopted by Hu as a hallmark of his administration.

Determined to continue teaching, the account goes, Fang returned to the academy in January for a brief period. Students were reported to have given him a round of applause after he taught his last class of the semester. "There is a limitation to people's lives, but there is no limitation to my determination to spread the party's doctrine," he was quoted as saying.

Researcher Jin Ling contributed to this report.