Uncovering the Century-old Truth: Revealing How Yunnan’s Top Tyrant Escaped Death Sentence.

Hello audience friends! Welcome to watch “A Century of Truth”.

The Chinese Communist Party advocates a society governed by the rule of law, but the offspring of high-ranking party officials and officials themselves often manage to escape legal sanctions.

Today, let’s take a look at a case of “Death Penalty that didn’t happen” reported on by a Chinese Central Television program “Strike Hard against Evil”.

In July 2018, a conflict erupted in a KTV in Kunming City, where a man viciously kicked another man in the abdomen, rupturing his bladder on the spot, then fled the scene.

During the investigation of this case by the local court, the name of the man who did the kicking caught the attention of the staff.

This man’s name is Sun Xiaoguo.

In 1998, another man in the same area was sentenced to death for crimes including rape and intentional injury, also named Sun Xiaoguo.

Staff compared the personal information of the two Sun Xiaoguos and found out that they were the same person.

How could someone sentenced to immediate execution of death penalty 21 years ago still be alive?

Sun Xiaoguo was once a student at a military school in Yunnan. According to school records, he was born on October 27, 1975.

In October 1994, when he was still a student at the military school, Sun Xiaoguo was sentenced to three years in prison for gang rape.

However, oddly enough, despite being 19 years old at the time, his age in the indictment at the prosecutor’s office was listed as “16 years old”, and his birthdate was changed to October 27, 1977.

Sun Xiaoguo not only became the perpetrator with the lightest punishment among five gang rapists but was also released on bail awaiting trial and for medical treatment.

Three years later, Sun Xiaoguo committed another crime, and his actions were extremely heinous.

From April to June 1997, he violently and forcibly raped four underage girls, one of whom was a girl under 14, and the other three girls were also under 18.

In November 1997, he incited others to beat two 17-year-old underage girls, in a particularly brutal manner.

On February 18, 1998, Sun Xiaoguo was convicted by the Kunming Intermediate People’s Court of rape, insult of multiple women including several underage girls, rape in public, intentional injury, among other charges, and was sentenced to death penalty, immediately executed.

Sun Xiaoguo filed an appeal, and in 1999, the Yunnan High People’s Court commuted his sentence to death with a reprieve. In 2007, the reprieve was reduced to 20 years in prison, and subsequently, he was granted multiple sentence reductions, serving only 12 years and five months before being released.

From immediate execution of death penalty to serving only 12 and a half years in prison, obviously, this is something that cannot be achieved by an ordinary background.

Sun Xiaoguo repeatedly escaped the legal net because he had a protector behind him, he was a “second-generation official”. His mother Sun Heyu was a police officer in the Guandu Branch of the Kunming Public Security Bureau.

His stepfather, Li Qiaozhong, was once the Deputy Director of the Wuhua Sub-Bureau of the Kunming Public Security Bureau. He was disciplined in 1998 for intervening in Sun Xiaoguo’s rape case and then reassigned as the director of the Wuhua District Urban Management Bureau in 2004.

After the commutation of Sun Xiaoguo’s death penalty in the second trial, his stepfather Li Qiaozhong forwarded the appeal materials to the High Court through connections, prompting the retrial of Sun Xiaoguo’s case, which then led to another trial and a commuted sentence of 20 years in prison through further connections.

Analyzing these official explanations reveals a significant loophole, that is how Sun Xiaoguo’s sentence was changed from immediate execution to a reprieve. This is a critical issue in this case, as this step is the most challenging and something that someone with an ordinary background could not possibly achieve.

The records of “Chinese Legal Yearbook 1999” show that Sun Xiaoguo appealed to the Yunnan High People’s Court, which upon review, “rejected the appeal, upheld the original verdict”.

The retention of the original verdict in the second trial is equivalent to confirming the death penalty, so how did Sun Xiaoguo escape?

Normally, the time frame between the final confirmation of the death sentence and the execution order given by the Intermediate Court varies from a few days to several dozen days. Sun Xiaoguo apparently initiated a retrial during the period after the second trial and before the death penalty was carried out, leading to the commutation.

However, as seen from the situation of Sun Xiaoguo’s case, the retrial was not made public, and there was no official notification regarding the change in sentence.

This can be observed by the reaction of court staff when handling Sun Xiaoguo’s intentional injury case in July 2018 at the KTV.

While the two cases are 20 years apart, due to the severity of Sun Xiaoguo’s crimes at the time, many people remember them, including many who recall him being sentenced to immediate execution of death penalty. However, the fact that he was not ultimately executed was known to very few, and even within the judicial system, many were unaware of this fact.

Furthermore, experts have questioned the reasons for Sun Xiaoguo’s sentence commutation. According to the laws prevailing in mainland China during Sun Xiaoguo’s conviction, “retaining under the gun” usually occurs in only three scenarios: when it is discovered before execution that the verdict may be wrong and requires modification, when the criminal exposes significant criminal facts or shows other significant meritorious deeds before execution, or if the criminal is pregnant.

It is unclear which of these scenarios Sun Xiaoguo’s situation fell under.

So, how did Sun Xiaoguo manage to serve less than 12 and a half years in prison and be released? A prisoner who committed multiple serious crimes surprisingly obtained a patent!

Through connections facilitated by Sun Xiaoguo’s stepfather, he came into contact with the political commissar of Yunnan Province’s First Prison.

With the support of this commissar and others, Sun Xiaoguo was commended several times during his imprisonment in the First Prison of the Province and had his sentence reduced twice, even when he did not meet the conditions for reduction.

To expedite Sun Xiaoguo’s release, Sun Heyu and others devised a strategy to secure a patent reduction.

Sun Xiaoguo applied for a patent for an “anti-theft manhole cover”, which resulted in a reduction of two years and eight months from his sentence.

How was this patent conceived?

The blueprint for the patent was provided by the chief engineer of the Yunnan Province’s First Prison, and the guards brought it into the prison, where the model was constructed according to the blueprint by prisoners, and Sun Xiaoguo’s name was then affixed to it. Sun Xiaoguo never participated in this entire process.

Regarding whether this patent could constitute a significant meritorious deed leading to a sentence reduction, mainland criminal defense experts have cast doubt as Sun Xiaoguo applied for a utility model patent, which is relatively simple and lacking technical content, sometimes serving as merely a gimmick.

Sun Xiaoguo was released in April 2010.

Sun Xiaoguo had three names. Sun Xiaoguo was the name under his mother’s surname; he also had the name “Li Linchen” under his stepfather’s surname and the name Chen Guo under his biological father’s name.

After his release, he began using the name “Li Linchen” and became the underworld boss in Kunming, known as “Big Li Zhang”.

In 2015, “Li Linchen” reverted back to his original name Sun Xiaoguo and began to assert himself publicly. At one point, there was a saying in Kunming, “Xiaoping manages during the day, and Xiaoguo manages at night.”

In early 2019, Sun Xiaoguo was arrested for the intentional injury case at the KTV, revealing the secret of his death penalty not being carried out back then. This news spread rapidly and stirred great public anger.

In March of that year, Sun Xiaoguo was detained.

Four months later, to quell public fury, his past case was retried, and publicly adjudicated, which resulted in Sun Xiaoguo being sentenced to death once again.

In February 2020, Sun Xiaoguo was executed. His mother, Sun Heyu, and stepfather, Li Qiaozhong, were respectively sentenced to 20 years and 19 years in prison. Additionally, 17 officials were sentenced to imprisonment for crimes of dereliction of duty and bribery.

However, many questions remain regarding this case. For instance, the “Guandu District Public Security Chronicle” shows that in 1992, Sun Heyu, without holding any position, became a third-level police inspector, as assessed by the CCP Public Security Bureau, a rank higher than her position as the head of the political department of the public security sub-bureau at that time. How did she achieve this rank without any official role?

Sun Xiaoguo’s adoptive father, Li Qiaozhong, who was disciplined for intervening in his case, was later able to transfer to become the director of the municipal Urban Management Bureau. How did he accomplish this?

Of course, the most significant question in this case may be how Sun Xiaoguo’s mother and stepfather, despite their relatively low positions, acted as his protectors and assisted him in evading punishment?

The mainland media outlet “Southern Weekend,” which reported on the Sun Xiaoguo case multiple times, revealed that the case may involve his biological father being a “senior official”. According to the announcement issued by the Yunnan Province Anti-Corruption Office about this case, Sun Xiaoguo’s biological father, Chen, was a worker at a unit in Kunming City. He retired due to a stroke in 1996, after being paralyzed, and passed away in 2016. The official announcement emphasized that Chen had never directly interfered with this case.

However, the official narrative seems to be a cover-up.

An informed person within the Yunnan Provincial political and legal department told Radio Free Asia that everyone knew who Sun Xiaoguo’s biological father was, but people dared not mention it.

Some signs suggest that this “biological father” holds a high position of power in Yunnan Province.

The day “Southern Weekend” published the report on Sun Xiaoguo in 1998, the reporter received a threatening call from Sun Heyu and Li Qiaozhong, who shouted, “Who do you think you are, a little reporter from ‘Southern Weekend’? I’ll have you in prison within a month!”

The reporter also disclosed that a leader from the Kunming Public Security Bureau actively approached him to write the report.

This leader told the reporter that the resistance faced in the process of handling the case was significant, with the police neither daring to release nor prosecute him, so they proactively sought out a journalist to use public opinion to drive the investigation against Sun Xiaoguo.

The power of Sun Xiaoguo’s “biological father” caused even local media in Yunnan to backpedal.

After exposure of the Sun Xiaoguo case in 1997, a local newspaper’s detailed report criticized the powerful individual behind Sun Xiaoguo for “tolerating, accommodating, condoning, and protecting” him.

However, just 20 days later, the same newspaper published a “Sun Xiaoguo Parents Interview Record” on the front page, expressing sympathy for the “plight of parents in this world”.

From criticizing the protective power behind Sun Xiaoguo to sentimentalizing the “parental heart,” it was evident that the “biological father” wielded extraordinary influence.

Who is Sun Xiaoguo’s biological father? Mainland media have yet to report on this.

Well, that’s all for today’s program. Thank you for watching, and see you next time.