Recently, details of corruption by Yang Hui, a female official in Guizhou, have been exposed. She was found to have embezzled to purchase a 40 million yuan villa and spent 8.5 million yuan on renovation. In the impoverished province of Guizhou, a total of seven corrupt officials with a billion yuan in ill-gotten gains have been uncovered in recent years.
On the evening of January 16th, Guizhou TV aired a special anti-corruption program. The program revealed that Yang Hui, by currying favor with the wife of former Guizhou Provincial Party Secretary Sun Zhigang, engaged in illicit money and power transactions with unscrupulous businessmen, even cultivating a “money bag” to seek personal gain through her influence.
The special program disclosed that Yang Hui’s “money bag” was a businessman named Zhu whom she had known for over a decade. When Yang Hui became the Party Secretary of the Provincial Center for Disease Control, she discovered lucrative opportunities in the medical industry for the procurement of equipment, drugs, and consumables.
She instructed Zhu to establish a company engaged in the sales of medical equipment and provided assistance for its business development using her power. Initially, Yang Hui found that due to the stable “circle of interests” entrenched in official circles, her “money bag” could only handle simple projects to keep running.
In the program, Yang Hui stated, “This is a system that is impenetrable and impermeable. It’s a stable relationship of interests that has existed for a long time.” She decided to carve out her own territory, declaring, “My new projects should be managed by me.”
Subsequently, by pleasing Sun Zhigang’s wife, Yang Hui climbed the ladder to secure a promotion and was appointed as the Party Secretary of the Provincial Health Commission in August 2020. While obeying Sun Zhigang’s wife, she also actively assisted Zhu’s company, controlled by Zhu, to earn more money through various means.
From early 2019 to early 2021, Zhu presented Yang Hui with “gifts” of a total of 6 million yuan in cash every Chinese New Year and Mid-Autumn Festival.
In September 2021, Yang Hui set her sights on a villa in the Guanshanhu District of Guiyang City, priced at 40 million yuan. Zhu agreed to provide the funds for Yang Hui to purchase the villa.
To buy the villa, Zhu first paid 5 million yuan in earnest money. Over the following months, he sent money to Yang Hui 17 times, totaling 45 million yuan.
Yang Hui confessed that Zhu had to go through various means in five or six cities across the country over a period of more than two years to transfer the money.
After purchasing the villa, Yang Hui spent 8.5 million yuan on renovation, with 2.3 million yuan alone spent on building a new swimming pool.
The villa is located by a lake in a park in the Guanshanhu District of Guiyang City and consists of four floors, extravagantly decorated.
In the program, Yang Hui said, “The vast majority of my criminal activities, the cost is just for a villa, a car, over 50 million yuan. I am paying for this.”
Unfortunately for Yang Hui, she didn’t get to enjoy her villa for long before being brought to justice for corruption.
Public records indicate that 52-year-old Yang Hui served as the Party Secretary and Deputy Director of the Guizhou Provincial Disease Control Center in 2015, Vice Director of the Guizhou Provincial Health Planning Commission in 2018, and Party Secretary of the Provincial Health Commission in August 2020. She was investigated in June 2024.
Sun Zhigang, the former Party Secretary of Guizhou Province who promoted Yang Hui, was sentenced to death with reprieve in October 2024 for accepting bribes totaling more than 813 million yuan.
Despite Guizhou being the province with the largest number of impoverished people in the country, in recent years, at least seven corrupt officials with over a billion yuan in ill-gotten gains have been unearthed.
These include: Wang Fuyu, former Chairman of the Guizhou Provincial Political Consultative Conference, who took 450 million yuan in bribes; Li Zaiyong, former Vice Chairman of the Guizhou Provincial CPPCC, who was bribed with 432 million yuan; Wang Xiaoguang, former Deputy Governor of Guizhou Province, who received 210 million yuan in bribes; Zhou Jiankun, former Vice Chairman of the Guizhou Provincial CPPCC, who was bribed with 108 million yuan; Yuan Renguo, former Chairman of Maotai Group, who received 1.129 billion yuan in bribes; and Gao Weidong, former Director of the Guizhou Coal Geological Bureau, who took 1.1 billion yuan in bribes.
Political commentator Wang Youqun stated in an article in Da Ji Yuan that the seven corrupt officials who amassed a billion yuan at each position had all gone through inspections by the CCP’s organization departments, and before their downfall, almost all supervisory mechanisms of the CCP were ineffective.
The article suggests that there may still be many cases yet to be investigated. According to the current selection and appointment mechanisms within the CCP, as these billion-yuan corrupt officials fall, it is highly likely that a new batch of such corrupt officials may emerge.
Despite the years-long anti-corruption campaign launched by the CCP, the more it fights corruption, the more corruption seems to flourish. Before the 20th National Congress of the CCP in 2022, Wang Youqun’s statistics showed that 112 billion-yuan corrupt officials had been investigated. On average, more than 11 officials were investigated each year. However, in 2024, at least 33 billion-yuan corrupt officials were sentenced.
Wang Youqun expressed, “The CCP’s cancer of corruption has entered its final stage with no cure!”