A Chinese court has sentenced a former senior government official to death after convicting him of accepting more than 2.21 billion yuan ($325 million) in bribes over three decades, marking one of the most severe corruption convictions under President Xi Jinping’s sweeping anti-graft campaign.
The Changzhou Intermediate People’s Court in Jiangsu Province handed down the sentence on Monday to Yang Youlin, 69, a former Executive Deputy Director of the Nanjing Economic and Technological Development Zone Management Committee.
The court found that Yang abused his office between 1993 and 2023 by accepting massive bribes from companies and private individuals in exchange for facilitating engineering contracts, land allocations, business approvals and access to financing.
Beyond bribery, Yang was also convicted of embezzlement, offering bribes, misappropriation of public funds, abuse of power and money laundering.
As part of the judgment, the court ordered the confiscation of all his personal assets and permanently stripped him of his political rights.
Although Yang pleaded guilty and expressed remorse during the trial while cooperating with investigators, the court ruled that the magnitude of his offences made him undeserving of leniency.
“The bribery amount was especially huge, the circumstances of his crimes were especially serious, the social impact was especially egregious and his actions caused especially major losses to the interests of the state and the people,” the court said in its judgment.
Chinese state media reported that Yang admitted guilt and expressed regret in his final statement before sentencing.
The verdict ranks among the toughest punishments imposed for economic crimes in China in recent years and underscores President Xi Jinping’s continued crackdown on official corruption.
In 2024, former Inner Mongolia official Li Jianping was executed after being convicted of bribery and collusion with a criminal syndicate, while in 2021, former China Huarong Asset Management chairman Lai Xiaomin was executed following convictions for bribery, embezzlement and bigamy.
Yang’s prosecution forms part of Xi’s anti-corruption drive launched after he assumed office in 2012. According to a March 2025 report by the United States Office of the Director of National Intelligence, nearly five million Chinese officials have been investigated and sanctioned under the campaign.
