Life in prison for ex-Hangzhou Party boss Zhou Jiangyong
From 2018 to 2021, he was the Communist Party’s top man in Hangzhou, the picturesque lake city that is also one of the country’s internet business hubs. The job ended with him behind bars.
Zhōu Jiāngyǒng 周江勇, the former Communist Party chief of Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang Province, has been sentenced to life in prison on corruption charges.
Zhou, 55, was given a suspended death sentence with a two-year reprieve for taking more than 182 million yuan ($25.5 million) in bribes over his two-decade-long career, according to a verdict issued by the Chuzhou Intermediate People’s Court in Anhui Province yesterday. The court also deprived Zhou of his political rights for life and confiscated all his personal property.
In April, Zhou had pleaded guilty to taking 193 million yuan ($27.9 million) in bribes. He was accused of providing favors, including “construction projects, contracting, land acquisition, and other commercial favors,” in exchange for illegal properties, either directly or indirectly through his family.
Zhou’s verdict concludes a highly watched case for the most senior official in Zhejiang Province to be ensnared by the Chinese government’s crackdown on corruption and the technology sector.
Zhou’s Ant-linked woes
In January 2022, Zhou became the first cadre to be expelled from the Party over corruption charges relating to the “disorderly expansion of capital,” a slogan that rose to prominence during Beijing’s tech crackdown in 2021. Zhou had been placed under investigation for suspected “serious violations of discipline and laws” a few months earlier in August.
Prosecutors did not name any fintech company in the ruling. But Zhou had earlier been linked to Ant Group, the Alibaba-affiliated financial technology giant founded by Jack Ma (马云 Mǎ Yún). Beijing had kicked off its sweeping campaign targeting the private sector in late 2020 by forcing Ant to scupper its $34 billion IPO. Ant Group and Alibaba are both headquartered in Hangzhou.
Zhejiang Province — one of the country’s major economic hubs — is also a power base of Chinese leader Xí Jìnpíng 习近平.
On July 7, Chinese regulators announced a 7.12 billion yuan ($984 million) fine on Ant, in what was largely perceived as a key signal of an end to the crackdown.
China moves to tighten up on corruption
On the same day that the court delivered Zhou’s verdict, a draft amendment to China’s criminal law was submitted for review to the Standing Committee of the 14th National People’s Congress (NPC), China’s top legislative body.
The proposed amendment, part of a broader attempt by Beijing to strengthen its graft-busting campaign, is aimed at refining “the crime of offering bribes and corruption by individuals from private firms,” according to Chinese state media.
The changes would shift the punishment from people receiving bribes to those paying them. It also would target internal corruption in private enterprises by imposing heavier penalties on employees.
