China sentences official to death for taking $325M in bribes

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• Hacker News
• There is the concept of sending doubles to stand in for punishment in china. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ding_zui
  by niemandhier
• Hopefully China will advance to a stage where they ban the death penalty like in many other countries.
  by fsuts
• > advance

  Like those 'advanced' countries that don't have death penalties but are silent - or arming/funding - a genocide?

  I guess some deaths are ok.

  by ebbi
• Anyone who think this demonstrates the CCP's epicbacon commitment to anti corruption needs to ask themselves how did this man take so much bribe over 30 years and is only sentenced now.

  Is he dumb? Surely he is smart enough to know he committed a capital crime and yet he kept doing it. Perhaps he only kept doing it because he believed he could somehow get away with it? Perhaps he saw others pull off the same stunt? Or perhaps he had the political capital to keep himself out of trouble and is now facing justice because he rubbed someone higher up the wrong way?

  Is the prosecution dumb? 300 million is no small money are they really so incompetent that over the course of 30 years they could not find anything wrong with this guy? Perhaps they had a reason to keep him around? Perhaps he had them in his pocket? Perhaps he had the connection to fuck up anyone who dares investigating him? Perhaps they never meant to care about corruption anyway and only went after him because someone somewhere issued an order and they are just charging him for corruption because the true reason is less convenient?

  China has invested a lot in whitewashing its public image these days. Every young left leaning westerner is salivating at the idea of a Chinese century because they somehow convinced themselves that the Chinese has the solution to everything that went wrong in the west. It's sad to see it spreading even to this website.

  by pibaker
• Epicbacon? Is that some new slang or a typo
  by trencedamp
• Wonder who this guy pissed off in the CCP.
  by MaxHoppersGhost
• It starts with an "X" and ends with an "i."
  by Exoristos
• Jk
  by jasonjei
• the reason i dislike seeing these articles on HN is that:

  1. strong defensive positions float to the top... which could be astroturfing.

  2. the merits of the concept aren't discussed; the convo falls back to whataboutism.

  maybe it's all fair, but on a site where everyone's ~anonymous, it's hard to take the discussion at face value.

  by dfee
• Most people here are anonymous, for all the discussions. Either trust that your fellow HNers are legitimate, or… ?
  by khazhoux
• The topic comment at the time I’m writing this is asking fair questions, in my opinion.

  - Many people feel the death penalty is wrong in every case.

  - Some have a general familiarity with high-level politics of elites and wonder about selective enforcement.

  These don’t feel like they’re in bad faith. The merits are difficult to know from the outside, so there will always be speculation based on someone’s lived experience and perceptions. Better to have those aired with a chance to respond, in my opinion.

  Especially for China, since it is a global power that operates differently from others. In my own country (United States), for example, we have brazenly open corruption with no consequences.

  by tyre
• Corruption is the most significant threat China has left now that Western capitalism has surrendered.

  Tariffs on all things Chinese is pretty much an open admission that the West can't compete.

  by jqpabc123
• Keep in mind, the official may have done nothing wrong but not kissed the wrong Communist behind so he got framed.
  by silexia
• Ooh, now do USA.
  by jeffrallen
• Someone like Trump probably couldn't even be a CCP party member. I've heard it's a relatively meritocratic organization, at least compared to pur political system. Though maybe someone from China can correct me.
  by mempko
• We should do this in USA
  by engineer_22
• You'd have to industrialize the capital punishment system to handle the demand.
  by RIMR
• Good for China.

  Society cannot work with too many corrupt civil servants. Yes, "autocrats", "civil liberties", and yet - the guy slurped up $325M to put his finger on the scale, not to change the model of governance.

  I wish we in the west took corruption more seriously, but I suppose we're more interested in cage fights on the lawn these days.

  by groby_b
• The US is very good if you're very rich. It's bad for everyone else. China appears to be somewhat bad or critical of the superrich, which is why they want to come to the US, but good if you're middle class or poor.
  by carabiner
• please elaborate on how the US is very good for those who are extremely poor? social safety net?
  by Natfan
• This is so true
  by drzhouq
• I would like such justice to be applied to a few European and French officials... Democracy could be a lot different if corruption and selling his votes was not a career goal for our officials.
  by greatgib
• Fascinating development in Chinese politics.
  by riazrizvi
• A state should never have the power to kill people --even though I think some just deserve death (like those raping then killing a child)-- because the state one day shall abuse that power to get rid of those who they don't like.

  But I gotta say something: if the EU or the US were to kill politicians taking in bribes, there wouldn't be many politicians left.

  by TacticalCoder
• China doesn't sentence official to death for genocide against Uyghurs
  by amai
• A relatively low level official can't take this much bribes. More like a scapegoat.
  by feverzsj
• Nah he took the bribes and probably paid 90% upward/laterally. Being the guy that actually takes the bribe is likely part of how he got promoted to where he is, in a way, like a soldier who gets promoted for being a calculated risk taker.
  by mothballed
• Over thirty years? I am surprised he didn't take more.
  by throwaway27448
• That's not how this works. It really depends on how close you are to a position, where people might want to bribe you. Low provincial officials with direct ties to local land development might e.g. be able to take many more bribes than a highly ranked official in an office that is far removed from economic activity.
  by alcasa
• It's not outside the realm of possibility for the positions he occupied. But yes, corruption is selectively cracked down upon in China
  by gitpusher