Ding Guangen, a former chief of propaganda for the Chinese Communist Party, died here in Beijing on Sunday. He was 83. His death was announced by Xinhua, China’s state news agency, which did not specify the cause. Mr. Ding stepped down in 2002 after a decade overseeing the Communist Party’s control of the news media and the arts in China. He had been minister of railways in the 1980s but was forced to resign in 1988 after a series of train crashes killed scores of people.