Former secretary Mao Qi of Wannian County in Jiangxi, who was reported by his female subordinate Li Peixia for alleged sexual assault and other crimes, has been sentenced to ten and a half years in the first trial. Earlier, Li Peixia had been sentenced to three years.
According to a news report from CCTV, on April 8, 2025, the Intermediate People’s Court of Xinyu City sentenced Mao Qi, former secretary of the Wannian County Committee, to ten years and six months in prison for accepting bribes, and imposed a fine of one million RMB.
Officials stated that from 2012 to 2024, Mao Qi, taking advantage of his positions such as director of the Talent Work Leading Group Office of the Shangrao City Committee (also acting as a member of the Wannian County Committee, Deputy County Mayor, and Secretary of the Wangjia Township Party Committee), Deputy Secretary and County Mayor of Wannian County, and Secretary of the Wannian County Committee, used his power and status to help others in project contracting, fund disbursement, job promotions, bank loans, etc., directly or through illegal acceptance of property totaling over 11.5 million RMB.
In a deviation from previous official announcements, the prosecution last December did not mention the “improper relationship issue between Mao Qi and Li Peixia,” but instead accused Mao Qi of accepting bribes in an amount that was “particularly huge.”
Since last year, the case of Li Peixia, a village official in Jiangxi, reporting her superior Mao Qi for sexual assault and retaliation, has become a viral incident online. In November last year, Li Peixia was sentenced to three years in prison. She was accused of using her position as the Secretary of the Shangfang Township Party Committee in Wannian County from April 2019 to February 2024 to seek benefits for others in project contracting and fund disbursement, and illegally accepting a total of 1.65 million RMB.
The first report was made on July 25 last year by a retired teacher named Li Changliu, who accused Mao Qi of suspected sexual assault against his daughter, Li Peixia, the Secretary of the Shangfang Township Party Committee in Wannian County, and stated that Li Peixia intended to report Mao Qi due to a dispute between them. Li Changliu revealed that he suspected his daughter was facing Mao Qi’s “retaliatory actions.”
In a video, Li Changliu mentioned that on May 23 last year, his daughter Li Peixia had expressed her intention to report Mao to the provincial authorities, but three days later, she was taken away by the Wannian County Discipline Inspection Commission and Supervision Commission, preventing her from speaking out. Li Changliu disclosed on Weibo: “Before Li Peixia was taken away, Mao Qi directly told her: this time, even if you don’t die, you will lose face!”
On August 18 last year, the official announcement from Shangrao City, Jiangxi Province, stated that Li Peixia had been “double-opened” (expelled from the CCP and dismissed from public office) and turned over to the judicial system. On November 3 of the same year, Mao Qi, the central figure in the reported incident, was also “double-opened” and handed over to the judicial authorities.
This incident has become a major scandal of debauchery and infighting within the Chinese Communist officialdom. However, analysts suggest that compared to the decadence of high-ranking CCP members, the misconduct of these lower-level officials is merely a drop in the bucket.