Recently, there have been reports from mainland China that Cheng Jun, the branch manager of the Bank of China in Zhejiang Province, has been taken away for investigation, although the official announcement has not been made yet. Cheng Jun ended his overseas assignment in 2024 and was transferred back to Zhejiang from Singapore, where he served as the branch manager of the Bank of China and the president of the China-ASEAN Business Association.
According to reports by mainland media outlets such as “Caixin” and the WeChat public account “Zhe Stock” on the 28th, it was disclosed that Cheng Jun was taken away for investigation by relevant authorities. This marks another branch manager of a major state-owned bank in Zhejiang Province being taken away for investigation while in office, and official information regarding the incident has not been released yet.
It has only been a little over a year since Cheng Jun returned to China from his overseas assignment.
Public information indicates that Cheng Jun is a senior economist with a Master’s degree in Economics from Renmin University of China and the University of Manchester in the UK. He is a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Banking in the UK and has immersed himself in the banking industry for over thirty years. Cheng Jun previously served in various key management positions at the head office of the Bank of China, including General Manager of the International Settlement Department and General Manager of the Trade Finance Department, before being posted overseas as the branch manager of the Bank of China in Johannesburg and later in Singapore.
In 2024, Cheng Jun returned from his overseas assignment and was appointed as the Secretary of the Communist Party Committee and the Branch Manager of the Bank of China in Zhejiang Province after being transferred back from the Singapore branch. In July 2024, he obtained the approval from the Zhejiang Regulatory Bureau of the China Banking Regulatory Commission to serve as the branch manager. Currently, he holds the positions of Secretary of the Communist Party Committee, Branch Manager of the Bank of China in Zhejiang Province, and President of the Zhejiang Banking Association.
The previous branch manager of the Bank of China in Zhejiang Province, Guo Xingang, stepped down in May 2020 and was investigated in April 2024. In December of the same year, Guo Xingang was expelled from the Communist Party, had his retirement benefits revoked, and was handed over to the judiciary.
In recent years, there have been a string of high-ranking officials from the Bank of China who have fallen from grace, including former Chairman Liu Liange (sentenced to death with a reprieve on November 26, 2024), former Deputy Branch Manager Mao Junping of the Ningbo branch (sentenced to 11 years and 10 months in prison in April 2024), former Discipline Inspection Secretary of the Henan branch Wang Jianxin (expelled from the Party and had retirement benefits revoked in May 2024, and transferred to the judiciary), former Branch Manager Zhang Dongxiang of the Jiangxi branch (indicted in January 2024), former Deputy Branch Manager Gao Zongsheng of the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region branch (expelled and transferred to the judiciary in September 2023), former Branch Manager Wang Jianhong of the Beijing branch (expelled from the Party, retirement benefits revoked, and transferred to the judiciary on September 1, 2023), former Deputy Branch Manager Chen Feng of the Heilongjiang Province branch (indicted in August 2023), and former Chief Business Manager He Fang’en of the Hebei Province branch (expelled from the Party, retirement benefits revoked, and transferred to the judiciary in January 2023).
On September 6 this year, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the State Supervision Commission announced an investigation into the former Chairman of the China Securities Regulatory Commission, Yi Huiman. Financial industry insiders revealed that Yi Huiman has a sister and three brothers, one of whom used his name to “mingle in the financial circles of Zhejiang” in the past, even engaging in financial business with local companies under the guise of being a relative of Yi Huiman.
Furthermore, the former Vice Governor of Zhejiang Province, Zhu Congjiu, was sentenced to life imprisonment on November 19, 2024. It was previously reported by mainland media that Zhu Congjiu’s case was originally a “bribery of over a hundred million yuan, starting with the death penalty” standard case, but eventually he made a guilty plea and received a “life imprisonment” sentence. What this plea brought, however, was a list of names that seemed to have opened Pandora’s box: one after another, branch managers of six major banks in Zhejiang Province were investigated; dozens of platform funds and private equity securities firms were implicated; and senior executives of CICC “lost contact collectively.”