China Huarong International Holdings Limited (referred to as “Huarong International”) former general manager Bai Tianhui was recently sentenced to death by the Chinese Communist authorities. Bai Tianhui had a close relationship with Huarong’s former chairman Lai Xiaomin, who was sentenced to death in January 2021 and executed 24 days after the verdict. Will Bai Tianhui also meet the same fate as Lai Xiaomin, facing an urgent execution by the CCP?
On May 28, the Tianjin Second Intermediate People’s Court publicly announced in the first instance that Bai Tianhui was sentenced to death for corruption and his personal assets were confiscated.
According to the indictment, Bai Tianhui, between 2014 and 2018, took advantage of his positions at Huarong (Hong Kong) International Holdings Limited as head of the business development department, general manager, director of the investment banking department, director of capital operation, assistant general manager, director, deputy general manager, and general manager, to illegally accept bribes totaling more than 1.108 billion RMB.
The court deemed Bai Tianhui’s crimes extremely serious. Despite his disclosure of major criminal activities by others and providing important leads to solve other cases, which were verified to be true and constituted significant contributions, the court found that considering the nature and severity of his criminal acts, leniency was not warranted.
Bai Tianhui’s close ties with former Huarong chairman Lai Xiaomin led the CCP to designate Bai Tianhui as an important accomplice to Lai Xiaomin’s various illegal activities. Bai Tianhui’s first-instance death sentence is seen as a continuation of the Lai Xiaomin case.
In April 2018, Lai Xiaomin fell from grace; on June 5th of the same year, Bai Tianhui was also investigated. Public records show that Bai Tianhui was born in 1979 and had over 15 years of experience in the finance and securities industry at the time of the investigation. Before that, Bai Tianhui held executive positions in some secondary and tertiary subsidiaries of Huarong.
In January 2021, Lai Xiaomin was sentenced to death for corruption, accused of receiving and soliciting bribes totaling 1.788 billion RMB, setting a record for the largest financial corruption case acknowledged by the authorities since the establishment of the CCP. The second trial of the case upheld the death sentence, and 8 days later, Lai Xiaomin was executed. From verdict to execution, there was only a 24-day interval.
In January 2021, in a so-called “anti-corruption special feature” titled “National Supervision” released on the official website of the CCP Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, Bai Tianhui was featured and revealed information about Lai Xiaomin. Bai Tianhui said, “Many projects were directly arranged by Lai Xiaomin, all were his friends’. Sometimes in order to fulfill leadership tasks, many factors and points from a market perspective were either overlooked or embellished.”
An article by Caixin claimed that in the years leading up to the Lai Xiaomin case, Huarong International in Hong Kong was obsessed with speculative stocks (stocks priced below 0.1 Hong Kong dollars), with Bai Tianhui as the main operator. This involved serious profit extraction behind the scenes, where Bai Tianhui and others benefited greatly.
The article stated that in May 2017, China’s first Sino-foreign joint venture investment bank, China International Capital Corporation (CICC), released a list of “suspected scam stocks” in the Hong Kong stock market. These stocks had features such as frequent capital operations, long-term prices below 1 Hong Kong dollar, deep declines, small market capitalization, poor fundamentals, frequent renaming, etc. Many institutions touched by Huarong were on the list.
Independent commentator Cai Shenkun recently posted on the social media platform X, saying that Lai Xiaomin’s backer is the family of former CCP Politburo Standing Committee member Zeng Qinghong. Many profitable projects of Zeng Qinghong’s daughter Zeng Baobao were channeled through Huarong. Bai Tianhui’s main crime was during his tenure as head of the business development department at Huarong (Hong Kong) International Holdings Limited, transferring a large number of Huarong’s high-quality assets at low prices to Zeng Baobao’s real estate group, Huayuan Nian.
Cai Shenkun stated, “Lai Xiaomin and Bai Tianhui thought that providing significant information about the Zeng family could save them from death, but they ended up dying even faster!”
After Lai Xiaomin’s downfall, CCP state media reports quoted industry insiders speculating that Lai Xiaomin’s corruption and abuse of power actually involved another question – who was his protective umbrella?
In 2018, CCP official media reports indicated that at the core of the investigation into Lai Xiaomin’s case were two companies with a “lock triangle” relationship with Huarong – Ningxia Tianyuan Manganese Industry Group and China Hongqiao Holdings. Liu Ting’an, a senior executive at Tianyuan Group and China Hongqiao, not only was Lai Xiaomin’s fellow native from Jiangxi but also his schoolmate from the same class. After Lai Xiaomin’s downfall, Liu Ting’an, chairman of China Hongqiao’s board of directors and CEO, was also taken for investigation.
China Hongqiao is a Hong Kong-listed company which was formerly known as Zizhuo International. It primarily engaged in the hard drive business before gradually transforming into a financial investment company and renaming itself China Hongqiao. In the second half of 2016, China Tianyuan Manganese Industry, wholly owned by Ningxia Tianyuan, became a shareholder of Zizhuo International.
Zizhuo International mainly produced and exported printed circuit boards, with several subsidiaries, the most significant being Zizhuo Feigao Circuit Board (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd. In November 2012, Zizhuo International sold 70% of Zizhuo Feigao’s shares, two pieces of land in Shenzhen, and the company building on them, to two buyers, with the biggest buyer being Shenzhen Huayuan Nian under the Huayuan Nian group.
After Lai Xiaomin’s downfall, in August 2018, without any public announcement, Huayuan Nian transferred Zizhuo Feigao’s shares to a relatively unknown company named Lexing Consulting. Lexing Consulting was established in early June 2018, indicating that this company was formed shortly before acquiring Zizhuo Feigao.
Before the first-instance verdict, Lai Xiaomin catered to the creators of “National Supervision,” disclosing that he had a residential property in a specific Beijing community equipped with multiple safes for hiding illicit funds. He requested bribe givers to only use cash to avoid detection. After receiving the money, he personally drove to the location, taking multiple detours on the way to prevent surveillance. He and some close confidants referred to this residence as the “supermarket.”
However, despite this, Lai Xiaomin was swiftly executed. CCP official media stated that Xi Jinping’s decision to swiftly execute Lai Xiaomin was based on considerations of “financial risks.”
Lai Xiaomin was executed on January 29, 2021. On the same day, CCP mouthpiece Xinhua published an article raising Lai Xiaomin’s “correctional punishment” to the political priority level of “prevention and resolution of major financial risks” emphasized by the Xi Jinping authorities.
The article claimed that Lai Xiaomin was involved in the “largest bribery case” since the establishment of the CCP.
The article referred to finance as the “core of the modern economy” and “the lifeblood of the real economy,” stating that corruption in the financial sector poses “great harm” and the Lai Xiaomin case is a “typical example” of preventing and resolving major risks.
When the CCP judicial department mentioned Lai Xiaomin’s “significant performance” in the first-instance verdict, stating, “Lai Xiaomin provided significant criminal clues about subordinates, which has been verified to be true,” it indicated that Lai Xiaomin did not report his superiors.
US-based political analyst Li Yanming told a reporter of Epoch Times that this statement clarifies that Lai Xiaomin provided significant criminal clues about his subordinates, not about superiors or the “big tigers” behind them. In other words, Lai Xiaomin, despite having other significant performances, did not reveal the crimes of superiors like Jiang Zemin or Zeng Qinghong, resulting in the inability to save his life.
Recently, a businessman with business ties to the CCP’s top princelings, Wu Tianming (pseudonym), revealed to the Epoch Times that Zeng Qinghong has close ties with the family of Jiang Zemin and Jiang Zemin’s son Jiang Mianheng and they are political opponents of Xi Jinping. The Jiang family owns significant assets overseas and is entirely outside the CCP system, currently controlled by Jiang Mianheng.
Jiang Mianheng also has connections with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Rocket Force, which is being purged by the Xi Jinping regime. Wu Tianming said that overseas there are some so-called “anti-Xi but not anti-CCP” individuals, who are actually part of Jiang Zeng’s faction. The infighting within the top CCP ranks has reached a significant degree of intensification.