Former National Committee member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), Bi Jingquan, has been sentenced to 14 years in prison for bribery. The court accused him of illegally accepting a total of over 57.42 million yuan in properties. Bi Jingquan used to be the chief secretary of then Vice Premier Wang Qishan and Wang Yang.
According to a report from China Central Television (CCTV), on September 15th, the Jinan Intermediate People’s Court in Shandong Province sentenced Bi Jingquan to 14 years in prison for bribery and imposed a fine of 5 million yuan.
The court stated that from 1995 to 2025, Bi Jingquan took advantage of his positions as deputy secretary-general of the State Council of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), Party Secretary and Director of the State Food and Drug Administration (CFDA), senior official in the National Administration for Market Regulation, member and deputy director of the Economic Committee of the 13th CPPCC, member and deputy director of the Economic Committee of the 14th CPPCC, executive vice chairman and chairman of the China International Economic Exchange Center to provide assistance to relevant units and individuals in business operations, administrative approvals, project settlements, etc. He illegally accepted a total of over 57.42 million yuan in properties, constituting a “particularly large amount” of bribery.
The judgment stated that Bi Jingquan voluntarily confessed to the majority of the bribery facts that the investigating authorities had not yet uncovered during the trial and pleaded guilty.
Bi Jingquan was officially announced to be under investigation in May last year and was later expelled from the CCP and dismissed from public office in December of the same year.
Public records show that Bi Jingquan was born in September 1955, in Qing’an County, Heilongjiang Province. He worked in the National Development and Reform Commission of the CCP, holding positions such as Director of the Economic and Trade Department, Chief Secretary, and Deputy Director.
Bi Jingquan had served as the chief secretary for Wang Qishan and Wang Yang. He became the deputy secretary-general of the State Council in April 2008, assisting then Vice Premier Wang Qishan. After Li Keqiang took office as Premier in March 2013, Bi Jingquan also assisted Vice Premier Wang Yang. On April 24, 2015, the CCP announced that he resigned as deputy secretary-general of the State Council to become the director of the CFDA. In March 2018, he became the deputy director of the National Administration for Market Regulation.
On July 15, 2018, the Jilin Changchun Changsheng company was found to have produced “frozen human rabies vaccines” with falsified records. A few days later, Changchun Changsheng was again found to have produced rabies and influenza vaccines using expired chicken eggs. At that time, Bi Jingquan, who was the deputy director of the National Administration for Market Regulation, served as the head of the CCP State Council’s investigative team.
In August 2018, Bi Jingquan resigned in connection with the problematic vaccine case, becoming the first central committee member to face consequences since the 19th National Congress of the CCP.
For the next two years, Bi Jingquan’s resume was blank, but in August 2020, he reappeared and took a secondary role at the CPPCC.
Regarding Bi Jingquan’s return to work in 2020 after resigning in 2018 and subsequently falling from grace, current affairs commentator Li Linyi told Epoch Times earlier that in Hubei, former Secretary Jiang Chaoliang was dismissed in 2020 due to the epidemic issue, later returned to the National People’s Congress, and was subsequently investigated in October of the following year. The situations of these two individuals are similar, both involving power struggles in the upper echelons. In the world of the CCP, no officials are free from corruption, and anti-corruption measures are merely a manifestation of power struggles.