Nanjing: A court in eastern China has sentenced former Nanjing city official Yang Youlin to death after convicting him of accepting more than 2.2 billion yuan (approximately $325 million) in bribes over a 30-year period, making it one of the country’s largest corruption cases in recent years.
The Changzhou Intermediate People’s Court announced that the 69-year-old was found guilty of bribery, embezzlement, abuse of power and money laundering. According to Chinese state media, Yang exploited senior positions he held in Nanjing between 1993 and 2023 to help businesses and individuals secure engineering contracts, land transfers and financing in exchange for cash and valuable gifts.
The court said Yang’s crimes were of an extremely serious nature and caused exceptionally heavy losses to the interests of the state and the people. Authorities ruled that the scale of his illegal activities and the damage caused justified the death penalty.
Yang came under investigation as part of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s long-running anti-corruption campaign, which has targeted senior government officials, military leaders and executives in the banking and financial sectors. Since taking office in 2012, Xi has intensified efforts to crack down on corruption, although critics argue that some investigations have also served political purposes by removing rivals.
Despite cooperating with investigators, pleading guilty and expressing remorse during the trial, the court concluded that Yang’s assistance was insufficient to merit a lighter sentence due to the severity of his offences.
Capital punishment for economic crimes remains uncommon in China but is imposed in exceptional cases involving massive financial misconduct. In 2021, former financial executive Lai Xiaomin was executed after being convicted of accepting 1.8 billion yuan in bribes over a decade. More recently, former Inner Mongolia official Li Jianping was executed in 2024 after being found guilty of embezzling and accepting more than 3 billion yuan in bribes.
In many corruption cases, Chinese courts instead issue lengthy prison terms or suspended death sentences that are later commuted to life imprisonment. Sentence reductions may also be granted when convicted individuals provide substantial assistance to authorities by exposing other offenders. However, the court ruled that the seriousness of Yang’s crimes outweighed any mitigating factors, resulting in the death sentence.
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