In November 1998, a 10,000-ton freighter quietly disappeared in the South China Sea. Aboard were 23 Chinese crew members, who, to the very end, did not know that they had boarded not an ordinary merchant shipping route, but the endpoint of a carefully planned maritime massacre. The “Chang Sheng” case was later classified as the largest maritime robbery and homicide case since the founding of New China. The cruelty of the case and the tortuous process of its investigation make it an unavoidable page in the history of China’s fight against maritime crime.
I. The Disappeared “Chang Sheng”
The “Chang Sheng” was a Panamanian-flagged bulk carrier with a total deadweight of 16,785 tons and an overall length of 146 meters. It belonged to Hong Kong Huibo Shipping Company, affiliated with Guangzhou Ocean Shipping Company. On November 13, 1998, it set sail from the Baosteel wharf in Shanghai, carrying coal slag bound for Malaysia. Aboard were 23 Chinese expatriate crew members.
Under normal circumstances, it should have arrived at its destination port within a few days. But the “Chang Sheng” did not appear at any port. It lost all contact in the waters near 22 degrees 20 minutes north latitude and 118 degrees 49 minutes east longitude in the South China Sea.
The shipowner initially thought it was merely a communications failure or a delay in the voyage. But as time passed, unease gradually intensified. After receiving a request for assistance in the investigation, the Guangdong Provincial Public Security Department required coastal public security organs to carry out sea searches to find the missing ship and crew. Maritime search and rescue forces were mobilized, but several days passed without any discovery. A 10,000-ton giant ship, together with 23 lives, seemed to have been swallowed by the sea.
II. Bodies on the Sea
From December 2 to 19, 1998, six bodies were found successively along the coastlines of Huilai County, Lufeng City in Shanwei, and the urban area of Shanwei in Guangdong.
The bodies were mainly discovered by fishermen. According to descriptions by witnesses at the time, the condition of the corpses was extremely tragic: some had no eyes left, some had their hands and feet almost entirely eaten away by fish, and combined with days of soaking in seawater, their appearances were completely unrecognizable. Some fishermen did not dare go out to sea for a long time after seeing the bodies, especially on foggy days.
Forensic examination confirmed that these six bodies were exactly the missing crew members of the “Chang Sheng.” After the news spread, the nature of the case changed completely. It was no longer a maritime accident, but a massacre. The Guangdong Provincial Public Security Department listed the case as Guangdong’s top priority case of 1999, with the code name “9901.”
Of the 23 crew members, six bodies were found, and the whereabouts of the remaining 17 were unknown. But the investigators knew very well that under such cruel methods, “unknown whereabouts” was almost equivalent to death.
III. The Face of the Pirates
As the investigation advanced, a criminal gang with Indonesian national Sony Wei and Chinese Shanwei native Weng Siliang at its core came to the surface.
The gang’s criminal plan was not improvised. As early as August 1998, Sony Wei, Weng Siliang, and Zhu Youwang had plotted repeatedly in Shenzhen, discussing impersonating public security border defense anti-smuggling personnel to carry out maritime robbery. The division of labor was clear: Sony Wei was responsible for providing robbery intelligence and leading the operation, Weng Siliang provided the vessel and driving and engineering personnel, and Zhu Youwang was responsible for robbery funding. The three then separately recruited Jia Hongwei, Li Changhong, and more than ten Indonesian nationals to join.
Their mode of operation was: going to sea carrying pistols, knives, clubs, handcuffs, sealing tape, and other tools; once they locked onto a target, they would change into armed police uniforms or camouflage uniforms, impersonate border defense anti-smuggling personnel, forcibly intercept the vessel, control the crew under the pretext of “inspecting for smuggling,” and then loot the property. Before the “Chang Sheng,” they had already successfully robbed two other foreign freighters using the same method.
The reason this model worked was that it exploited a gray area in maritime law enforcement: on the high seas far from the coast, when a fast boat bearing police markings and carrying people in uniforms approached a merchant ship, ordinary crew members found it very difficult to tell at first whether it was genuine. By the time they realized the other side was not law enforcement personnel, the guns were already pointed at them.
IV. November 16, 1998: Boarding
At noon on November 16, 1998, Sony Wei and his gang set out to sea from Zhelin Port in Raoping County, Guangdong, in an iron-hulled boat. The people aboard wore border defense police uniforms and carried long and short firearms.
They spotted the “Chang Sheng” sailing normally in the South China Sea. Following their usual method, they fired warning shots in pursuit and forcibly stopped the freighter. Subsequently, Sony Wei and 18 others boarded the “Chang Sheng.” Jia Hongwei wore an armed police officer’s uniform, while the others wore armed police border defense uniforms or camouflage uniforms, looking like a regular anti-smuggling unit.
After boarding, they quickly took control of the situation. The 23 crew members were handcuffed and all escorted onto the deck to “undergo inspection.” No one resisted, or rather, in the face of guns and handcuffs, resistance was already impossible. The crew members were locked in the cabins, and the pirates began looting the ship’s property.
Meanwhile, the iron-hulled boat that had transported the pirates aboard returned to Zhelin Port in Raoping County. Huang Weizhong and six others took samples of the slag from the “Chang Sheng” back to report to Weng Siliang. Weng Siliang commanded from land, while Sony Wei executed on the ship, and the two maintained contact.
V. Drifting and the Decision
After the “Chang Sheng” was seized, it did not immediately sail toward any clear port for selling the loot. It drifted along the coast from Fujian to Guangdong for nearly ten days.
What happened on the ship during those ten days was known only to those involved. But what is certain is that the 23 crew members were held in the cabins, their handcuffs were not removed, and their fate hung in the balance. Sony Wei and Weng Siliang maintained contact in some way. Weng Siliang looked for buyers on land, while Sony Wei waited at sea for instructions.
The final decision was: kill all the crew members.
As to how this decision was made, later court proceedings did not disclose further details. But what can be confirmed is that around November 25, Sony Wei summoned his accomplices on the “Chang Sheng” and announced the order to kill. He assigned each pirate a “task,” requiring each person to kill at least one crew member, and threatened that whoever did not act would be thrown overboard.
To leave the others no way out, Sony Wei first set an “example.” He personally killed one crew member. Then the massacre began.
The 23 crew members were bound with ropes, weighted with iron blocks and other heavy objects, and thrown into the sea one by one. The entire process lasted two days, the 25th and 26th, and 23 lives disappeared from the deck of the “Chang Sheng” and sank into the South China Sea. Those bodies later found by fishermen were the few that floated up because the bindings were not secure or the iron blocks came loose. The rest remained at the bottom of the sea forever.
VI. Selling the Ship
After the killings, the pirates disposed of the final “commodity”—the “Chang Sheng” itself.
Sony Wei contacted an Indonesian buyer. Weng Siliang negotiated with the buyer on land and finally sold the ship for 350,000 US dollars. The buyer sent a group of foreign pirates to sail the “Chang Sheng” away. This 10,000-ton freighter has since disappeared.
The personnel involved in the crime divided the proceeds. According to later judicial findings, the pirates actually obtained 970,000 yuan RMB. Twenty-three lives and a 10,000-ton vessel were exchanged for less than one million yuan RMB in division of spoils. In the ledger of Weng Siliang and Sony Wei, this deal was “worth it” to an outrageous degree.
VII. The Manhunt
After the “Chang Sheng” case came to light, the Guangdong Provincial Public Security Department listed it as the “9901 Special Case” and mobilized a large number of police forces to investigate. Breakthroughs in the case came from multiple directions.
On the one hand, the bodies found along the coast provided the police with direct evidence confirming that the crew members had been killed. On the other hand, analysis of the gang’s previous methods and screening of criminal groups in relevant sea areas gradually identified the names Sony Wei and Weng Siliang.
The arrests spanned multiple provinces and lasted for a considerable period. The principal offenders Jia Hongwei, Sony Wei, and Weng Siliang were captured one after another. But not everyone was brought to justice in time. Zhang Junhong, a native of Zhouzhi, Shaanxi, was one of the important persons involved in the case and fled after the incident. The Ministry of Public Security issued a wanted notice in March 1999, and the Shaanxi police organized nearly 30 arrest operations over several years, many of which came up empty. Zhang Junhong hid in southern Shaanxi under the alias “Liu Runde” and once narrowly escaped. It was not until the Spring Festival of 2002 that he was captured in Zhouzhi County seat.
By early 2000, the main suspects had basically been brought to justice. The trial of the case then began.
VIII. Trial and Execution
On December 22, 1999, the Shanwei Intermediate People’s Court handed down the first-instance judgment in the case. Weng Siliang, Sony Wei, Jia Hongwei, and ten others were sentenced to death, and the remaining 25 defendants were sentenced to life imprisonment, fixed-term imprisonment, or exempted from criminal punishment. After the first-instance verdict was announced, Weng Siliang, Sony Wei, and 16 other defendants appealed.
On January 8, 2000, the Guangdong Provincial Higher People’s Court made the final judgment, rejected the appeals, upheld the original judgment, and submitted it to the Supreme People’s Court for approval. Because Sony Wei was an Indonesian national, under China’s Criminal Procedure Law, a death sentence involving a foreign national must be approved by the Supreme People’s Court.
On January 28, 2000, with the approval of the Supreme People’s Court, Weng Siliang, Sony Wei, Jia Hongwei, and ten others were executed by firing squad in Shanwei, Guangdong. From the occurrence of the case to the execution, about 14 months passed.
IX. Aftermath
The “Chang Sheng” case has been concluded in legal proceedings. But the problems it left behind did not disappear with the sound of thirteen gunshots.
At the moment the 23 crew members boarded the pirates’ boat, there was no mechanism to remind them that what awaited them ahead was not an anti-smuggling inspection, but handcuffs and butcher knives. The reason the pirates were able to succeed repeatedly depended precisely on the ambiguous zone in the maritime law enforcement identification system. An iron-hulled boat, a few sets of imitation uniforms, and a few guns were enough to make a 10,000-ton merchant ship stop and make 23 well-trained crew members give up resistance.
The whereabouts of the “Chang Sheng” itself remain unknown to this day. It was sold for 350,000 US dollars to an unidentified buyer and thereafter disappeared from tracking view. A 10,000-ton giant ship does not vanish into thin air, but its destination has no answer in the judicial files.
And for the fishermen who saw the bodies washed ashore in December 1998, the shadow left by this massacre at sea was far more enduring than the words on the judgment document. Some fishermen did not dare go to sea for a long time on foggy days, because they knew that what might be hidden in the fog was more terrifying than wind and waves.