Recently, details of an incident where ten officials, organized by Li Xianlin, former member of the Luo Shan County Committee and former secretary of the Political and Legal Committee, consumed alcohol, with one person ending up dead after drinking four bottles of liquor, have been exposed in a special anti-corruption documentary by the Chinese Communist Party. Currently, Li Xianlin has been expelled from the Party, and suspicions of criminal activity have been transferred to the prosecutor’s office for further review and prosecution.
Ironically, on the day before the dinner party, on March 21, 2025, the Luo Shan County Committee and the Political and Legal Committee separately held so-called anti-corruption education deployment meetings. Li Xianlin not only attended both meetings but also spoke as the “leader” at the Political and Legal Committee meeting, emphasizing the importance of ensuring that actions were implemented. The next day at noon, he was seated at the dining table himself.
The documentary revealed that Li Xianlin organized the dinner party and hosted his superior, the then Executive Deputy Secretary of the Xinyang City Committee’s Political and Legal Committee, Ye Jinguang. Li Xianlin later invited several officials from the political and legal system to accompany them for the meal, including three deputy secretaries of the Political and Legal Committee of Luo Shan County, leading officials from the county procuratorate and the county public security bureau, as well as several officials from the Xinyang City Committee’s Political and Legal Committee.
Of the ten attendees, seven were members of the leadership team of their respective units, with three of them being the heads.
The dinner party lasted from 12 p.m. to 2 p.m., during which five of the ten attendees consumed alcohol, finishing four bottles of white liquor. Less than 3 hours after dispersing, Li Xianlin learned that Xia Yu, the deputy secretary of the Political and Legal Committee of the County, had died after drinking.
Attempting to conceal the truth, Li Xianlin gathered the officials who attended the dinner party from the county to discuss a strategy. “One purpose is to compensate Xia Yu’s family, and the second purpose is to try to cover up the matter, cannot let it escalate,” said Li Xianlin.
Huang Jiacheng, former deputy secretary of the Political and Legal Committee of the Luo Shan County Committee, stated, “Li Xianlin negotiated, he took 900,000 yuan, Duang Weiwei and Wang Haiyang each took 800,000 yuan, I took 200,000 yuan, and Fang Jianbing took 100,000 yuan.”
After privately compensating the deceased’s family, Li Xianlin thought he could cover up the issue. The next day, when the Political and Legal Committee of the county submitted a written report to the county committee, it only mentioned that Xia Yu died from a sudden illness, concealing the banquet and alcohol consumption. Although the then county committee secretary, Yu Guofang, knew the report was false, he did not report it to the higher-level CCP organization. However, the Xinyang City Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervision later received relevant feedback and reported it.
The total cost of the dinner party was 7170 yuan, with over four thousand yuan spent on alcohol, billed in the name of the organization at the seller, and over three thousand yuan for the meal, which Huang Jiacheng paid in advance. After the accident, Li Xianlin, fearing an investigation, settled the bill himself. Li Xianlin stated that if nothing had happened, this money would have been reimbursed in other ways.
Li Xianlin not only repeatedly violated regulations regarding drinking and dining but also allegedly committed other serious disciplinary violations and crimes. Currently, Li Xianlin has been expelled from the Party and dismissed from public office, with suspicions of criminal activity being transferred to the prosecutor’s office for further review and prosecution.
On May 13, 2025, the CCP Central Commission for Discipline Inspection reported this incident, but did not disclose further details. It only mentioned that the 10 officials involved were removed from their positions, expelled, or demoted.
In fact, incidents of CCP officials gathering for banquets and drinking leading to deaths have occurred frequently. Despite the so-called ban on alcohol consumption in official circles.
In December 2022, six CCP officials in Qinghai Provincial Party School during the “20th Congress” training session consumed alcohol, resulting in the death of one person after drinking seven bottles of liquor. The incident was only reported nearly half a year later, shocking the nation, and prompting crackdowns on such behavior in various regions.
Subsequently, the Discipline Inspection and Supervision Commission of Hunan Province reported that 11 leadership officials in Xiangxi Prefecture violated rules by indulging in dining and drinking during centralized training on learning the “spirit of the 20th Congress,” meeting for drinks in the evenings despite daytime classes.
Incidents of drinking leading to trouble have also occurred within the CCP military.
At the end of 2015, the Chinese Ministry of Defense confirmed that Zhang Yan, the commander of the 26th Army, drank with two former subordinates from the 39th Army, resulting in one person’s death. Zhang Yan was later demoted from his senior military rank to deputy military rank and dismissed from office.
In September 2017, Huang Hongfei, the political commissar of the Type 052D missile destroyer Nanjing of the East Sea Fleet, died of suffocation due to alcohol intoxication.