Shanxi Provincial Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervision announced on July 30th that Chen Xiangyang, former deputy secretary of the Changzhi City Committee in Shanxi Province, former party secretary and former mayor of the city government, is suspected of serious violations of discipline and laws, and is currently under investigation.
On the evening of July 6th, according to Shanxi Changzhi TV station, on that day, the 35th meeting of the 15th Changzhi Municipal People’s Congress decided to accept Chen Xiangyang’s request to resign from the position of mayor of Changzhi City.
Gong Mengjian was appointed as the deputy mayor and acting mayor of Changzhi City.
Less than two months ago, Chen Xiangyang’s name appeared on the public notice list proposed to be the party secretary of the city committee.
On May 14, 2026, the Organization Department of the Shanxi Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China issued a public announcement for the proposed appointment of cadres, including Chen Xiangyang, deputy secretary of the Changzhi City Committee and mayor. The public announcement showed that Chen Xiangyang, born in April 1969, is a member of the Communist Party of China, deputy secretary of the Changzhi City Committee and mayor, and was proposed to be the party secretary of the city committee.
In the following days, a major accident occurred in Changzhi. On May 22nd at 19:29, a particularly serious gas explosion occurred in the Liushenyu Coal Mine of Tongzhou Group in Qinyuan, Changzhi, Shanxi. The initial official report stated that the accident caused at least 90 deaths, later revised to 82. Two people were reported missing, and 128 were injured and hospitalized. This mine disaster is considered the most severe in China in the past 17 years.
Subsequently, it was revealed that there were actually 247 people underground at the time of the explosion, with 144 carrying underground personnel positioning cards and 103 without them; the drawings provided by the company did not match the actual situation underground; the enterprise had two sets of monitoring systems, one was a “safety compliance system” specifically used to deal with government network monitoring, and the other was a “shadow system” used to command workers mining illicitly in “concealed work areas.”
In early June, Zhao Yongjin, secretary of the Communist Party Committee of Qinyuan County, was officially announced to have fallen from grace. Netizens mocked Zhao Yongjin as being the scapegoat thrown out by the authorities.