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Thread: China Capital Punishment News

  1. #151
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    Chinese Hospital May Have Killed Tens of Thousands to To Sell Their Organs for Profit

    The human rights abuses in China are numerous, and a recent undercover investigation of one of the country’s premier hospitals may have uncovered another gruesome series of abuses

    Epoch Times, an international news site based in New York that focuses on human rights issues in China news, recently began digging into Tianjin First Central Hospital’s well-known organ transplant practice and discovered that the medical facility isn’t telling the truth about where it gets all of its organs for transplant.

    Based on the investigation, some speculate that tens of thousands of people may have been killed so that the hospital could sell and transplant the organs for a profit.

    According to the report, officials say the organs come only from formally executed prisoners.

    “In Tianjin, that would be about 40 executions a year—a number derived from calculating the city’s population against the national death row total,” according to the report. “But at Tianjin First Central, the number of transplants is off the charts.”

    The organs could not have come from volunteer donors because China only very recently began its organ donation system, according to the news outlet.

    From the late 1990s to 2003 alone, Dr. Shen Zhongyang, who is hailed as the pioneer of China’s growing organ transplant system, performed about 1,000 liver transplants at the hospital, according to a report by the Tianjin municipal government, the investigation found.

    The report continues:

    Official numbers from the hospital are scarce, but penetrating that secrecy makes clear that Tianjin First Central Hospital, one of the busiest and most acclaimed in the country, for years having enjoyed extensive official backing, transplanted many times more organs than a supply of executed prisoners could support. Moreover, it appears to have transplanted many times more organs than it says it did.

    In a detailed study of its activities based on publicly available documents, Epoch Times found sufficient evidence to throw into great doubt, if not demolish entirely, the official narrative of organ sourcing in China. This is simply due to the number of transplants: they are far too high.

    …This issue has largely been dodged by luminaries in the international medical community. But the circumstantial evidence bolstering the alternative explanation—organized mass murder of prisoners of conscience, using the tools of medicine, in the service of profit, by the world’s most populous nation—continues to grow, and with it frustration among doctors that nothing is being done.

    The lengthy investigative report pointed to evidence that the organs may come from Falun Gong prisoners in China. The 2014 book “The Slaughter” by Ethan Gutmann, alleges that China is persecuting and mass killing members of the religious group, possibly harvesting their organs and selling them for profit.

    Another frightening detail from the investigation says Shen’s techniques are “consisted with live or close-to-live harvesting from donors.”

    The Chinese government appears to be heavily invested in the practice. In December 2003, a local governing body spent about $20 million to construct a 17-story organ transplant building for the Tianjin hospital as its organ transplant program began increasing rapidly, the report states.

    In 2014, The Transplantation Society, an NGO of the World Health Organization, sent a letter rebuking China for continuing to use organs from executed prisoners and calling the practice “unacceptable,” according to the report.

    These horrific findings are further evidence of China’s complete disregard for the value of human life. The country’s brutal One Child Policy has led to horrific forced abortions and the targeting of unborn girls for abortion. Family planning officials frequently jail couples who refuse to comply with the policy, sentence them to house arrest or labor camps, revoke jobs or governmental support, use physical harassment or violence and often target other family members.

    http://www.lifenews.com/2016/02/17/c...ns-for-profit/
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

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    Man thought to be Chinese ripper is arrested

    HONG KONG — Gao Chengyong led a quiet life in a small city in western China. A onetime migrant labourer, he raised two boys who went to college. He enjoyed ballroom dancing with his wife.

    But the police say Mr Gao also had a gruesome secret that he kept from his family, as China’s state media have reported in recent days. He is suspected of raping and killing 11 women and girls over a 14-year streak starting in 1988, sometimes cutting off body parts such as breasts, hands and ears, or slitting their throats. The youngest victim was 8.

    On Chinese social media, the suspect has been labelled China’s Jack the Ripper, after the serial killer, never caught, said to have murdered women in Victorian London.

    On Friday (Aug 26), the police arrested Mr Gao, 52, after matching his DNA and fingerprints to evidence found at the scenes of the killings, nine in the small city of Baiyin in Gansu province and two in Baotou, a city in Inner Mongolia. Mr Gao, who was taken into custody in the grocery shop he operated, confessed to the killings, Beijing News reported on Monday.

    Despite the forensic evidence, Mr Gao eluded the police for so long partly because, as the resident of a small village, he managed to avoid the requirement that all Chinese must now submit fingerprints when applying for their national identity cards. But this year, his uncle was arrested on a minor offence and a sample of his DNA was taken. The police then determined that he was related to the killer, China Daily reported, citing Mr Yin Guoxing, a DNA expert.

    http://www.todayonline.com/chinaindi...ipper-arrested
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

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    Villager in China massacres 17 neighbors after killing his parents

    A villager in southwest China massacred 17 neighbors after killing his parents in order to try to cover up his crime, authorities say.

    Yang Qingpei, believed to be 26 or 27, argued with his parents over money on Wednesday evening and killed them, according to the Xinhua News Agency. Fearing he would be identified, he then murdered 17 neighbors in the village of Yema, cops said.

    It was not immediately clear how the victims were killed.

    The suspect was arrested Thursday in the provincial capital of Kunming, approximately 120 miles away, a few hours after the bodies were discovered.

    The victims included 11 males and eight females, according to AFP. The youngest victim was a 3-year-old girl, and the oldest was 72, according to the report. Three of the victims were children.

    The 19 victims were from six different families, according to the Guardian.

    It was one of the worst mass slayings in recent years in China. Due to tough gun laws, mass killings in the country are usually carried out with knives, poison, homemade explosives or by arson.

    http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crim...icle-1.2813354
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

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    Bai Enpei given suspended death sentence for amassing millions in bribes and will have no chance of parole under changes to the criminal code

    A former Communist Party boss of Yunnan province has been given a suspended death sentence for corruption, the harshest penalty imposed on a senior official arrested since President Xi Jinping launched his anti-graft drive in late 2012.

    Bai Enpei, 70, was ordered to serve the term for taking massive bribes and having assets he could not account for.

    Bai, a deputy head of the national legislature’s environmental protection panel at the time of his arrest, is also the first senior official jailed for life without the chance of parole or a cut in his sentence since the criminal code was amended in August last year.

    The amendment bars anybody sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve for taking “extremely huge amounts of bribes and causing huge losses” from parole or a reduced sentence.

    http://www.scmp.com/news/china/polic...nce-spend-life
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

  5. #155
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Europe’s no-go zones: Inside the lawless ghettos that breed and harbour terrorists

    By Geoffrey Clarfield and Salim Mansur
    The National Post

    Last month, French police thwarted an attempted terrorist attack at Paris’ Notre Dame Cathedral. Luckily, the cell of radicalized French women who were taking orders from Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) commanders in Syria did not get away with it, but it seems that more often than not, they do. How is this possible?

    On July 14, when the people of France were celebrating the anniversary of the liberation of the Bastille prison by secular Republican revolutionaries in 1789, an apparent lone-wolf terrorist drove a truck into a holiday crowd in Nice. Eighty-four people were killed and more than 300 were wounded, some of whom may be disabled for life.

    Media coverage of the incident followed a now-familiar pattern. At first, it was reported that Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, a Tunisian citizen living in France, had carried out the attack on his own. Initial investigations suggested that he was not religious or interested in Islam, ate pork, drank alcohol, was sexually active and perhaps had “mental problems.” And, of course, the Internet was filled with claims by ISIL that it had masterminded the attack.

    French authorities soon discovered that Bouhlel had been planning this for a long time, that he had been visiting jihadist websites and that he had at least seven accomplices — five fellow Tunisians and two Albanian Muslims — who were all well armed.

    Hours after the massacre, one of his accomplices visited the site to film the reaction of people in and around it. What is worse, is that the evidence strongly suggests that they were planning a second bomb attack a few weeks later, during the height of the French holiday season in August.

    As there is no death penalty in France, when and if these people are convicted, they will enter a prison system where 70 per cent of the prisoners are Muslims, many of whom have been radicalized behind bars. Other prisoners will treat them like heroes. They will be well protected, even privileged.

    Europe is now a hotbed of terrorist attacks by Muslims. In Belgium, on March 22, two suicide bombings took place, at the Brussels airport and the Maalbeek metro station. The terrorists died with their victims. Thirty-two people were killed and more than 300 were wounded. Security officials searched the airport after the explosion and found another bomb. Again, we can assume that many of those who survived will be disabled for life. And yes, ISIL took automatic credit for the attack.

    How is it that in Europe, one of the most advanced and well-organized societies on the face of the Earth, Muslim terrorists seem to just come out of the woodwork — fully armed with trucks filled with explosives, assault rifles and bombs — and wreak havoc on civilian society? How is this possible, given the sophistication, wealth and training that are the pride of the French and other European police forces, as well as their intelligence and security agencies? The clue to the answer to these questions begins in Molenbeek in Brussels, the capital city of the European Union and the NATO alliance.

    Molenbeek is what terrorism and security experts call a “no-go zone.” In Europe, no-go zones are what North Americans would call ghettos. But French and Belgium no-go zones have a distinct profile. They are usually ethnic enclaves in otherwise prosperous cities, like Paris and Brussels. They are almost exclusively populated by Muslims. In France, these are largely Muslims from North Africa and former French West Africa. Some are French citizens and some are illegal residents.

    These no-go zones are areas of high unemployment, especially high youth unemployment. Anthropologists and sociologists who study these phenomena point out that inevitably these conditions result in the creation of violent gangs. So, although a significant number of usually middle-aged men and women commute outside their no-go zones to work in the wider society, they come home to these lawless suburbs. Well, not quite lawless, given that a new set of laws is replacing those of secular France or Belgium in many of these areas.

    Gangs dominate these suburbs and make their living by selling drugs. As the young gang members are looking for authority and endorsement, they have turned to the radical Islamic preachers who come from countries like Algeria, and who are members of radical Islamic movements in countries such as Morocco and Iran.

    The Saudis and the Iranians often bankroll these preachers and the radical imams who live in these ghettos. Those imams who cannot get financial support from foreign benefactors often collect welfare from the French state and still preach jihad in the ghetto. Mosques become hotbeds of radical activity. They are also ideal places to store and transfer weapons and explosives, to be used in the growing number of terrorist attacks taking place across western Europe.

    At the same time, in these no-go zones there is a push for the implementation of Sharia law and Sharia courts. Let us remember that Sharia law condones polygamy and recommends amputation for theft and the death penalty for any apostate who leaves Islam. Non-Muslim wives, and sometimes husbands, of these children of the ghetto are often forced, or pressured, to convert to Islam.

    As this dynamic reaches its extreme, non-Muslim owners of apartments and residents of these areas are forced out, often under threat of violence, or after having been attacked. Once radical Muslims have gained control over these no-go zones, the general non-Muslim population does not enter them, out of fear of being attacked. And soon after, the police and the fire departments fear to enter them, as well, and stop patrolling them altogether.

    Given the fact that the radical Muslim preachers of these ghettos are fundamentally anti-Semitic in their preaching, Jews in countries like France and Belgium, whose parents may have survived the Nazi occupation, are even more frightened of entering these no-go zones than other citizens. Not surprisingly, their synagogues in nearby suburbs are regularly attacked and vandalized. The state can neither protect Jewish citizens and their property, nor exert its authority in the no-go zones.

    Despite the fact that both the liberal American press and numerous think-tanks and research institutes in France, Belgium and Britain have done studies and written articles about this growing phenomenon, there are still elite politicians like the mayor of Paris who deny that there is any such thing as a no-go zone in the French republic.

    In August 2014, the French magazine Contemporary Values suggested that France had more than 750 areas of “lawlessness,” a.k.a. no-go zones. In a 2011 study, comprising 2,200 pages, Giles Kepel, a political scientist and specialist on Islam at the Institut Montaigne, and his colleagues conclude that these no-go zones are now becoming separate Islamic societies. In these areas, Sharia is replacing French civil law and the residents are rallying under the banner of radical Islam and violent jihad, against their fellow French citizens. No doubt a similar dynamic has been taking place in the South Asian Muslim enclaves in Britain, as well as in the Turkish and Balkan Muslim enclaves in Germany.

    Not all recent immigrants to Europe behave this way, however. The British Sikhs who moved there in large numbers after the Second World War have, as a group, one of the highest living standards in the country. Many of the Argentinians who entered western Europe during the period of the junta have also mixed effortlessly with their host societies, as have thousands of Poles.

    The answer to how these terrorists are able to appear all of a sudden, as if out of nowhere, and strike at the heart of Western civilization should now be clear. The reason apparently lone assassins suddenly materialize in prosperous European cities and are able to kill scores of people and wound hundreds is that they have a state within a state that gives them refuge, the no-go zone. There they do not need a passport. There they can store arms. There they can prepare their attack plans. From there they can quickly go out and wreak havoc. If they get lucky, their co-conspirators can disappear back into the no-go zones, knowing they will be seen as heroes by their neighbours, their religious leaders and the growing number of alienated, drug-dealing youth gangs.

    Before the French, Belgian, German and British governments — including their police, courts, schools and housing authorities — offer resident Muslims in Europe the blessings of a secular society, they will have to take back the ghettos. They will have to disarm the militants, deport scores of preachers, pacify the gangs, cut off the drug supply and cut off funding from Saudi Arabia and Iran. And they will have to persuade key players in the ghetto to stand up to their violent neighbours and instead support the peaceful aims of the state.

    However, if the European ruling elites and the mainstream media have stopped believing in the liberté, égalité, fraternité (liberty, equality, fraternity) that was proclaimed on that fateful day of July 14, 1789, then the future of France and much of western Europe will be one of a growing series of terrorist nightmares. They will have lost the war against the jihadists, the authority of the state will wither, and the French and other European majorities will be treated like a conquered people in their own lands.

    The same fate awaits the British, if they do not soon take preventative action.

    http://news.nationalpost.com/full-co...our-terrorists
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
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    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
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    Corruption: Chinese official sentenced to death

    Former deputy head of the coal department of China’s National Energy Administration, was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve on Monday for accepting bribes and holding a huge amount of assets from unidentified sources.

    Wei Pengyuan, was found to have taken advantage of his posts between 2000 and 2014 to seek benefits for others, accepting bribes worth more than 211.7 million Yuan (about 31.4 million dollars).

    According to the statement, Wei was also found to have possessed a large amount of assets from unidentified sources, which exceeded his legal income.

    It said that after the two-year reprieve, Wei’s death penalty would be commuted to life imprisonment, and no further commutation or parole will be permitted.

    The statement added that all his ill-gotten assets would be confiscated.

    Wei was put under investigation in May 2014 on allegations of accepting bribes.

    Investigators later found he was hoarding more than 200 million Yuan in cash at his home.

    http://punchng.com/corruption-chines...nced-to-death/
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    Chinese boss gets suspended death sentence over Tianjin blast

    China’s Tianjin courts have meted out a suspended death sentence to the head of a Chinese logistics firm and jailed 48 others for their involvement in the deadly explosion at Tianjin port last year, which left 165 people dead and eight missing.

    Yu Xuewei, chairman of Tianjin Dongjiang Port Ruihai International Logistics Co, was sentenced to death by Tianjin High Court with a two-year reprieve after being found guilty of bribing government officials, obtaining certificates by illegal means to store hazardous chemicals at a warehouse in Tianjin port, and providing fake environmental assessment papers, according to court papers.

    Under Chinese law, a suspended death sentences commonly refers to life imprisonment.

    Tianjin No. 2 Intermediate People’s Court and other local courts also handed down prison terms ranging from one year to life for another 48 people.

    The courts said officials at Tianjin’s transport, port, customs, workplace safety supervision and maritime departments showed serious negligence of duty in their jobs, with some taking bribes and issuing unlawful permits, leading to the disaster on 12 August 2015.

    The devastating blast was caused by hazardous goods stored in a chemical warehouse of Tianjin port. The explosion destroyed 304 buildings, 12,428 vehicles, 7,533 containers, and incurred economic losses of nearly RMB7bn ($1bn), as well as contaminating the air, water and soil in the surrounding areas.

    http://www.seatrade-maritime.com/new...jin-blast.html
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

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    4 in China cleared after 2 successful death sentence appeals

    BEIJING (AP) — Four men in eastern China accused of murder and rape have been exonerated after a 16-year legal ordeal in the latest instance of Chinese courts overturning deeply flawed verdicts.

    A Jiangxi province high court announced Thursday it cleared the men accused of killing a woman in 2000, apologized and offered them an opportunity to seek compensation.

    The men had been sentenced to death by a municipal court in 2003 based on dubious confessions and successfully appealed. The same lower court reheard the trial and sentenced the defendants to death again the following year, only to be overruled again by the provincial court in 2006.

    The provincial court reviewed the case this year and determined that forensic evidence did not match confessions given by the defendants, who said they had been tortured.

    A string of stories about wrongful convictions has surfaced in recent years in China, where the government has sought to strengthen a criminal justice system wracked by police and prosecutorial misconduct. Human rights monitors say suspects are often tortured by police to extract confessions and cases are swayed by political interference.

    And in court, prosecutors almost always win: China has a 99.9 percent conviction rate, according to official statistics — one of the highest in the world.

    In February a man named Chen Man walked out of prison 21 years after he was wrongfully convicted. In another high-profile case, an Inner Mongolia man was exonerated for a rape and murder in 2014, 18 years after he had already been executed and nine years after another man, a serial rapist, confessed to the crime.

    The parents of the man, Hugjiltu, were given 30,000 yuan ($4,300) in compensation.

    Top Chinese officials, including Supreme People’s Court Chief Justice Zhou Qiang, have openly spoken about the need to combat wrongful convictions and shore up public confidence. But international experts say deep problems will persist as long as China lacks an independent judiciary and the courts remain controlled by the Communist Party.

    http://wtop.com/asia/2016/12/4-in-ch...tence-appeals/
    "There is a point in the history of a society when it becomes so pathologically soft and tender that among other things it sides even with those who harm it, criminals, and does this quite seriously and honestly. Punishing somehow seems unfair to it, and it is certain that imagining ‘punishment’ and ‘being supposed to punish’ hurts it, arouses fear in it." Friedrich Nietzsche

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    Nanny Sentenced to Death for Fire That Killed 4

    By Lin Qiqing
    Sixth Tone

    A live-in nanny was sentenced to death on Friday for starting a fire last summer that killed a mother and her three young children in eastern China’s Zhejiang province.

    The Hangzhou Intermediate People’s Court announced the verdict on Friday in a trial closely watched by domestic media.

    In the early morning of June 22, 2017, 35-year-old nanny Mo Huanjing set fire to the family’s apartment by lighting a book in the living room. According to the court’s report, she had lost 60,000 yuan ($9,500) through online gambling the previous night, and hoped that if she put out the blaze, the mother, Zhu Xiaozhen, might lend her money out of gratitude.

    But the fire quickly grew out of control, and Mo fled from the 18th-floor residence, leaving Zhu and the children — a 7-year-old girl and two boys aged 4 and 10 — behind. All four died from carbon monoxide poisoning.

    “Mo Huanjing deliberately started a fire in the high-rise apartment in the early morning that led to four deaths and significant property losses,” the court’s report said. “The criminal motivation is despicable; the results are extremely severe and have seriously damaged public security and caused social harm.”

    The family had hired Mo, who comes from southern China’s Guangdong province, through an agency in September 2016. Between March 2017 and the date of the fire, Mo pawned jewelry and watches stolen from the family for more than 180,000 yuan, and had also borrowed 114,000 yuan from Zhu, but lost all the money through gambling. According to her mobile phone records, Mo had searched fire-starting techniques and “Will arson lead to prison?” online before committing the crime.

    The tragic case attracted attention nationwide as it highlights some of the core concerns of China’s growing upper middle class, such as increasing demand for domestic help — typically migrant workers — and inadequate fire safety management.

    The family’s apartment was one of the most expensive in Hangzhou, the capital of Zhejiang, with a market value of more than 20 million yuan. Yet firefighting infrastructure at the compound appeared to be lacking: After Zhu called the police, it took more than two hours for firefighters to find them. Investigation later revealed that the compound’s water pressure was insufficient, and that there was no suitable parking for fire engines that could reach the top floors.

    Mo’s defense lawyer argued that the property management company’s negligence was partly to blame for the fatalities, and the court’s report also acknowledged that the compound’s poor emergency management had resulted in a prolonged rescue time.

    The victims’ grieving husband and father, Lin Shengbin, has also become a social media advocate for improved fire safety. “If the disaster had not happened, I might never have discovered that our lives and happiness were so vulnerable,” he wrote in an open letter on Jan. 31. “We are living in an extremely fragile emergency response system, with safety measures that are full of loopholes.”

    In addition to the death penalty, the court sentenced Mo to five years in prison and a 50,000-yuan fine for theft.

    After Friday’s verdict was announced, Lin posted on his Weibo microblog “Wife and Kids in Heaven” that “the devil has finally received punishment by law, death penalty.” He added that he plans to file civil lawsuits against the other parties responsible.

    http://www.sixthtone.com/news/100169...-that-killed-4

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    Death penalty for ‘godfather’ of Chinese coal mining town over US$160 million in bribes

    By Jane Cai
    The South China Morning Post

    Zhang Zhongsheng showed ‘extreme greed’ and was handed most severe punishment for ‘big losses he caused to the nation and the people’, court rules

    A former vice-mayor of a poverty-stricken city in the coal-rich province of Shanxi was on Wednesday sentenced to death, without reprieve, for accepting over one billion yuan in bribes (US$160 million).

    The sentencing of Zhang Zhongsheng – known for his splendid hilltop mansions and dubbed the “godfather” because of his influence and power in the city of Luliang – was an unusually harsh punishment for economic crimes, even since President Xi Jinping took power in 2012 and started an unprecedented crackdown on corruption.

    Zhang can still appeal the sentence handed down by the Intermediate People’s Court of Linfen, and the death penalty must be approved by the supreme court in Beijing.

    In sentencing, the court said Zhang had shown “extreme” greed in taking bribes, according to Xinhua.

    Shanxi, in the north, was targeted by Xi’s anti-graft campaign in 2013, described as one of the country’s “disaster zones” that was suffering from a “landslide of corruption” among local officials, leading to a flurry of arrests of its political and business elite.

    Zhang, 65, a short, bullish man, worked in local government for about 40 years before he came under investigation by the party’s graft-busters in 2014.

    The court found Zhang accepted more than 1.04 billion yuan in bribes from 1997 to 2013, and in return he eased the way for entrepreneurs in the city, approving and granting licences for coal mine mergers and other projects, Xinhua reported

    Zhang was also unable to explain the source of over 130 million yuan of personal assets, according to the ruling.

    The court said the amounts involved were “extremely large”, particularly in two cases.

    “Two out of the 18 bribery cases concerned over 200 million yuan, and he asked for bribes of 88.68 million yuan,” the court said.

    Zhang had not returned over 300 million yuan of these bribes, the court said.

    It described Zhang as “contemptuous of rules and laws” and “extremely greedy”, saying he did not restrain himself even amid the nationwide anti-graft drive, concluding that he deserved the most severe punishment for “the big losses he caused to the nation and the people”.

    Nestled in the mountains of the dusty Loess Plateau, Luliang is best known for having served as a base for the Red Army during the second world war. Nearly 70 years since the Communist Party took power in China, Luliang still lags behind the rest of the country, with one-fifth of its population of 3.7 million living in poverty. Yet its rich deposits of coal have fuelled frenetic investment over the past decade, turning some mine owners into millionaires.

    According to a three-month investigation into corruption in Luliang in 2014 by financial magazine Caixin, some of the area’s businessmen claim to have spent US$150,000 a year bribing officials who, like Zhang, controlled the mines and could close them down if they were deemed unsafe.

    “This is a typical case showing how officials, even the low-ranking ones, can easily amass a huge amount of wealth by wielding their influence to allocate resources,” said Hu Xingdou, an independent political economist.

    “This is a heavy price to pay for using your administrative power to manipulate the system,” he said.

    http://www.scmp.com/news/china/polic...ning-town-over

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