The Communist Party of China confirmed on Tuesday that it had executed Bai Tianhui, who once held several high-ranking positions at the embattled finance giant Huarong, after several appeals in the Tianjin court system failed.
Bai was convicted on multiple appeals of bribery while holding several positions in various arms of Huarong, including Huarong (Hong Kong) International Holdings Co., Ltd., and China Huarong International Holdings Co., Ltd. He is the second executive associated with Huarong — whose central entity is China Huarong Asset Management — that the Chinese government has executed in recent memory. Huarong has been the subject of intense Chinese government interference, including a massive bailout in 2022 to keep it afloat after asset managers at the corporation, referred to in some reports as a “bad bank,” made high-risk financial bets that threatened the entirety of the communist nation’s embattled economy.
The execution also followed the news that another court had sentenced Gou Zhongwen, a former vice mayor of Beijing and prominent lawmaker, to death on similar charges of bribes. Unlike Bai, however, Gou, as a former member in good standing of the Communist Party, will not be executed immediately and may be eligible for life imprisonment in two years.
The Chinese state-run outlet Global Times described Bai’s acceptance of bribes at Huarong as an extravagant crime, stating that he was convicted of taking over $150 million in bribes, including property as well as cash.
“Bai exploited his positions of authority… to seek benefits for relevant entities in matters such as project acquisitions and corporate financing,” the Global Times, citing the court rulings against Bai, explained.
“The amount of bribes involved was particularly huge, the circumstances of the crime were especially severe, the social impact was particularly egregious, and it caused especially significant losses to the interests of the state and the people,” the state newspaper declared.
Bai was first sentenced to death in May 2024 over the bribery accusations, three years after Lai Xiaomin, the former chairman of the central Huarong corporation, was executed on similar charges of bribery. At the time, reports noted that the Chinese government chose to execute Bai even after publicly revealing that he had cooperated with authorities, reportedly telling them about “major crimes” at Huarong that police were not aware of yet. This was not enough for the Communist Party to lower the sentence.
Bai is the second of six high-ranking Huarong officials placed on trial; another four are reportedly still enduring the secretive Chinese legal process. In a profile of the finance giant in May 2021, Bloomberg News described Huarong as a “bad bank” so big that its risk-taking jeopardized the stability of the entire Chinese economy, at that point in a fragile state worsened by genocidal dictator Xi Jinping’s insistence on forcing the country’s largest cities into lockdowns to fight the Wuhan coronavirus. Government assistance, the outlet suggested, “doesn’t settle the question of how Huarong makes good on some $41 billion borrowed on the bond markets.”
“Like other key state-owned enterprises, Huarong still appears to be considered too big to fail,” Bloomberg observed. “Huarong’s role in absorbing and disposing of lenders’ soured debt is worth preserving to support the banking sector cleanup, but requires government intervention.”
In 2022, the Chinese government granted China Huarong Asset Management a $6.6 billion bailout, stabilizing the company following the execution of former chief Lai.
Xi Jinping, who has been in charge of the country since 2013, has made fighting “corruption” a central tenet of his time in power, targeting both state-run companies and officials within his Party. As of 2024, the anti-corruption campaign has targeted and defrocked over 1.5 million Communist Party officials.
The latest to fall is Gou Zhongwen, the former Beijing vice-mayor sentenced to death on Monday. Gou also served within the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), the weaker of the two rubber-stamp legislative federal bodies in China. As an official, Gou was sentenced on charges of both bribery and abuse of power.
“Through trial, it was found that from 2009 to 2024, Gou took advantage of his positions… to provide assistance to relevant units and individuals in matters such as business operations and project approvals,” the state outlet Global Times reported on Monday, citing the Chinese legal system. “He illegally accepted assets and property equivalent to over 236 million yuan ($33.4 million).”
As with Bai, the Times used florid language to defend the use of capital punishment in the sentencing:
The amount of bribes he accepted was extraordinarily large, the circumstances of the crime were extremely serious, the social impact was especially vile, and his actions caused exceptionally severe losses to the interests of the state and the people. According to the law, he should be sentenced to death for his crimes.
While formally sentenced to death, the newspaper added, “after the two-year reprieve period and the sentence is legally commuted to life imprisonment, Gou shall be subjected to lifelong imprisonment without commutation or parole.” The Global Times claimed that some of the mitigating factors delaying the execution were the fact that he failed at accepting some of the bribes in question and, as with Bai, “voluntarily disclosed some bribery facts not yet known to the investigative authorities.”
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