China\'s Liu Xiang becomes Communist Party official

China's Olympic and world 110m hurdles champion Liu Xiang has taken up a Communist Party Youth League post, as the state seeks to capitalise on the millionaire athlete's star status. In a posting on China's Twitter-like Tencent microblog, Liu said he gave a speech at a Shanghai sports meeting Thursday as the representative of the youth league, an organisation widely seen as grooming China's future leaders. According to Xinhua news agency, Liu was named deputy secretary of the Shanghai sports bureau committee of the Communist Youth League, which would make him a municipal-level official. The report said Liu's official duties were unlikely to interfere with his training as an athlete. China's President Hu Jintao, who reportedly joined the league at the age of 14, was chairman of the organisation in the early 1980s. Liu became China's first track gold medallist at the 2004 Athens Olympics, set a world record of 12.88 in 2006 which remains the second fastest time in history, and went on to be crowned world champion in 2007. The same year, he was made a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, an advisory body to the Communist Party, in an appointment widely seen as an effort by the ruling party to profit from his rising popularity. Wide-ranging sponsorships with companies such as shoe giant Nike have made Liu a multi-millionaire. But an Achilles injury ended his bid to defend his Olympic title before adoring fans at the 2008 Beijing Games. He made a comeback at the World Championships in South Korea in August, taking silver behind American Jason Richardson in a time of 13.27 seconds. Now 28, he also confirmed in August that next year's London Olympics would be his swansong.