Chinese court sentences former Nanjing official to death for $325 million corruption

By Ezurike Ugochukwu

A court in eastern China has sentenced a former senior city official to death after convicting him of accepting more than 2.2 billion yuan (about $325 million) in bribes over a 30-year period, in one of the country’s biggest corruption cases in recent years.

The former official, Yang Youlin, 69, was found guilty of bribery, embezzlement, abuse of power and money laundering by the Intermediate People’s Court in Changzhou, Jiangsu Province.

According to Chinese state media, Yang exploited several official positions he held in Nanjing between 1993 and 2023 to facilitate engineering contracts, land transfers and financing approvals in exchange for huge sums of money and other valuables.

In delivering its judgment, the court described Yang’s crimes as “extremely serious,” saying they caused “exceptionally heavy losses to the interests of the state and the people.”

Although Yang cooperated with investigators, pleaded guilty and expressed remorse during the trial, the court ruled that the gravity of his offences outweighed any mitigating factors, making him undeserving of a reduced sentence.

Yang’s conviction forms part of President Xi Jinping’s sweeping anti-corruption campaign, which has targeted thousands of officials across China’s political, military, financial and state-owned enterprise sectors since Xi assumed office.

While corruption-related death sentences remain relatively rare in China, courts have imposed the punishment in cases involving exceptionally large sums or particularly serious abuse of public office.

In 2021, former state-owned financial executive Lai Xiaomin was executed after being convicted of accepting 1.8 billion yuan in bribes over a decade. Similarly, former Inner Mongolia official Li Jianping was executed in 2024 after being found guilty of embezzling and accepting bribes totalling more than 3 billion yuan.

Chinese courts often hand down suspended death sentences in corruption cases, which are usually commuted to life imprisonment after a specified period if the convict demonstrates good behaviour. Some defendants have also received reduced sentences after assisting investigators or exposing other offenders.

However, the Changzhou court held that although Yang had cooperated with authorities, the scale and severity of his crimes rendered his assistance insufficient to justify leniency.

The judgment marks another high-profile conviction under China’s ongoing anti-graft campaign, which President Xi has consistently presented as a key pillar of his governance agenda, although critics have argued that the campaign has also served to sideline political opponents.