The Wang Huaizhong case was the third case of a provincial-ministerial-level corrupt senior official sentenced to death since the reform and opening up. Unlike Hu Changqing and Cheng Kejie, Wang Huaizhong’s trajectory of corruption bore a stronger “proactive” character: he did not passively accept “sugar-coated bullets,” but used his power to actively solicit bribes, and even after sensing an organizational investigation, attempted to use the huge sums he had solicited to “settle” the investigation. The following focuses on the course of the case and the key criminal facts.

I. Career Beginnings and the Expansion of Power

Wang Huaizhong was born in August 1946 in Bozhou, Anhui. His career began in Fuyang. In March 1993, he became deputy secretary of the Fuyang Prefectural Party Committee and commissioner of the administrative office; in October 1995, secretary of the Fuyang Prefectural Party Committee; in February 1996, secretary of the Fuyang Municipal Party Committee; and in October 1999, he was promoted to vice governor of Anhui Province. It took Wang Huaizhong more than six years to rise from the local level to the provincial-ministerial level, and locally he had a reputation for “being able to rise.” But details later disclosed showed that this … Read More

The Cheng Kejie case involved the largest bribery amount among senior leading officials since the founding of New China, and it remains the highest-ranking leading official ever subjected to capital punishment for the crime of accepting bribes. Unlike the Hu Changqing case, which was exposed by a “disappearance,” the clue in the Cheng Kejie case came from a single disclosure made during the review of a person involved in another case—two orders to sell white sugar at depressed prices led to a shocking case involving more than 40 million yuan in bribes.

I. The Sugar Incident: A Clue from a Single Disclosure

In January 1999, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) was handling other cases in Guangxi. While reviewing a person involved in a case, this individual, hoping to earn merit, voluntarily disclosed a piece of information: during his tenure as Chairman of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, Cheng Kejie had twice instructed him to demand 7,000 tons of sugar from the Guigang Sugar Factory at a depressed price for a Hong Kong businessman named Li Ping to resell, so as to earn a high price differential.

The content of this disclosure was not complicated, and the amount … Read More