On the first working day after the New Year, Ding Xiongjun, former chairman of Guizhou Maotai Group, announced that he is under investigation, just 8 months after stepping down from his position and being appointed as the director of the Market Supervision Administration of Guizhou Province. With Ding Xiongjun under investigation, three former chairmen of Guizhou Maotai have now fallen from grace. Both his predecessors, Yuan Renguo and Gao Weidong, have been convicted of embezzling over a hundred million yuan each and sentenced to life in prison.
On January 2nd, the website of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the National Supervision Commission of the Communist Party of China announced that Ding Xiongjun, the Party Secretary of the Market Supervision Administration of Guizhou Province and the Director of the Market Supervision Administration of Guizhou Province (Guizhou Provincial Intellectual Property Office), is suspected of serious violations of discipline and law, and is currently undergoing disciplinary review and supervision investigation by the Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervision in Guizhou Province.
Publicly available information shows that Ding Xiongjun was born in Chongyang, Hubei in August 1974. After obtaining a doctoral degree, he worked in Guiyang and served as the Secretary of Baiyun District Committee. In November 2013, he was appointed as the Deputy Secretary-General of the provincial government. In 2016, Ding Xiongjun was transferred to become the Deputy Mayor of Bijie City. In November 2018, he was appointed as the Director of the Provincial Energy Bureau.
Ding Xiongjun is also a delegate to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, a representative of the 14th National People’s Congress, and a member of the 13th Guizhou Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China.
In August 2021, the Guizhou provincial government recommended Ding Xiongjun as a candidate for the Director and Chairman of China Guizhou Maotai Group Co., Ltd., and the Director and Chairman of Guizhou Maotai Co., Ltd. In September of the same year, Ding Xiongjun succeeded Gao Weidong as the Chairman of the third board of directors of the company, becoming the third leader of Maotai to be “parachuted” from the Guizhou government after Li Baofang and Gao Weidong.
In the late evening of April 29, 2024, the official WeChat account of Guizhou Maotai announced that on April 27, the Maotai Group Party Committee Theoretical Learning Center held a centralized learning session, with Zhang Deqin, the Party Secretary of the Maotai Group Party Committee, presiding over the meeting and giving a speech. 36 minutes later, the official WeChat account of the Guizhou provincial government announced the appointment and dismissal, stating that Ding Xiongjun was appointed as the Director of the Market Supervision Administration of Guizhou Province (Guizhou Provincial Intellectual Property Office).
It is worth noting that in recent years, many top executives of Maotai Group have been brought down, including former chairmen Yuan Renguo and Gao Weidong.
In September 2021, Yuan Renguo was sentenced to life imprisonment for bribery involving over 1.129 billion yuan, and in September 2023, he passed away suddenly in prison. In February 2024, Gao Weidong was also sentenced to life imprisonment for bribery involving over 1.1 billion yuan, of which more than 46.56 million yuan was not actually received.