Former deputy director of the China National Tobacco Monopoly Bureau, Zhang Tianfeng, has been sentenced to 12 years in prison on charges of bribery.
The Intermediate People’s Court in Ganzhou City, Jiangxi Province, stated that from 2004 to 2023, Zhang Tianfeng used his positions as the party secretary, director, and manager of the Yulin City Tobacco Monopoly Bureau (branch), a member of the party group and deputy general manager of the Shaanxi Provincial Tobacco Monopoly Bureau (company), the party secretary, director, and general manager of the Shaanxi Provincial Tobacco Monopoly Bureau (company), as well as the director of the personnel department of the China National Tobacco Monopoly Bureau, to seek benefits for relevant units and individuals in project contracting, employee recruitment, job adjustments, and promotions, directly or through others, by illegally accepting a total of more than 34.07 million yuan in cash and gifts.
Public records show that Zhang Tianfeng was born in 1963 and had worked in various tobacco-related departments in Shaanxi for a long time. In 2017, he joined the China National Tobacco Monopoly Bureau as the director of the personnel department (ministerial level) and was promoted to deputy director (deputy ministerial level) in 2020. He retired in June 2023 due to reaching retirement age.
On January 17, 2025, Zhang Tianfeng, a deputy ministerial official, was officially investigated, becoming the first high-ranking official to fall to an anti-corruption probe in 2025. On July 14 of the same year, the authorities announced that Zhang Tianfeng had been expelled from the Party, stripped of benefits, and transferred to judicial authorities. The notification stated that Zhang Tianfeng had abused his position for personal gain, engaged in power-for-money transactions, and illegally accepted huge amounts of wealth.
Since 2021, corruption scandals within the Chinese tobacco system have been exposed. Several high-ranking officials, including former director of the China National Tobacco Monopoly Bureau and former general manager of China Tobacco Corporation Ling Chengxing, former deputy director of the National Tobacco Bureau He Zehua, Xu Jie, and former head of the discipline inspection team Pan Jiahua, have been caught in the crackdown. Many of these individuals were accused of “living off tobacco” and illegally accepting significant sums of money. He Zehua, for example, was convicted in the first instance of accepting bribes exceeding 943 million yuan and was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve, ineligible for sentence reduction or parole.
The China National Tobacco Monopoly Bureau was formally established in 1984 and operates under the “one system, two brands” structure in conjunction with China Tobacco Corporation, for comprehensive administrative management of the tobacco monopoly. Due to its monopolistic nature, tobacco has long been considered a lucrative system within the Communist Party.