Recently, Jing Yaping, the former director of the Big Data Development Administration in Guizhou Province, has been expelled from the party and dismissed from public office by the authorities. The case of Jing Yaping has garnered significant attention due to her embezzlement of government servers for Bitcoin mining, resulting in a profit of 327 Bitcoins, equivalent to over 1.1 billion Chinese yuan at current market value. This case reflects how corrupt practices by officials are becoming more covert and diverse in the digital economy era.
Jing Yaping, the former director of the Big Data Development Administration in Guizhou Province, was recently expelled from the party and dismissed from public office for serious violations of discipline and law. According to the Guizhou Provincial Commission for Discipline Inspection, the 61-year-old Jing Yaping was accused of accepting gifts that could potentially affect the fair execution of official duties, shifting personal expenses to others; being greedy and engaging in power-for-money exchanges, abusing her authority to seek benefits for others in project approvals and contracts, and illegally accepting substantial sums of money.
Additionally, Jing Yaping was accused of using government servers for Bitcoin mining, where she mined 327 Bitcoins, involving a significant amount of money.
According to reports from “Sichuan Mobile News” and Sina Finance, Jing Yaping used government servers to mine Bitcoins for herself, and at the time of her downfall, she still had 327 Bitcoins in her account. Based on the latest market prices, her Bitcoins are now worth $38.75 million, roughly equivalent to 270 million yuan. Based on the average price of 6,120 yuan per square meter in Guiyang, 327 Bitcoins could purchase 441 apartments of around 100 square meters each.
Jing Yaping holds a Ph.D. in electronic engineering and graduated from the University of Electronic Science and Technology. She has a relevant technical background and served as a faculty member at various higher education institutions in Guizhou. She became the deputy director of the Big Data Development Administration in Guizhou in 2016, was appointed as the director of Guizhou Academy of Sciences in 2019, and then promoted to the director of the administration in 2021, until her dismissal in October 2024. In February of this year, she underwent discipline inspection and supervision investigation, and her qualification as a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference was revoked in April.
In recent years, several officials have been implicated in cryptocurrency-related cases, including former directors such as Yao Qian of the China Securities Regulatory Commission’s Technology Supervision Department and Xiao Yi, the mayor of Fuzhou City in Jiangxi Province. Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, with their decentralized nature, have gradually become new tools for some officials to engage in corrupt activities.
What sets Jing Yaping apart from other officials who have been brought down is that she didn’t acquire Bitcoin through bribery but rather by utilizing public resources for mining. The public has expressed strong concerns about the abuse of government resources and deficiencies in regulatory systems.
Furthermore, technical analysis shows that mining Bitcoin using government servers is highly inefficient. Despite Guizhou being the first province in China to establish a Big Data Management Administration, possessing numerous data centers and computing resources with a total computing power of 49 EFLOPS, professional estimations suggest that even utilizing the entire provincial computing power would require 91 years to mine 327 Bitcoins. Questions about how she managed to evade server log records and monitoring systems have raised concerns.
It is worth noting that two former directors of the Guizhou Big Data Administration have been brought down. The Big Data Development Administration of Guizhou Province is a direct department of the Guizhou provincial government at the department level, being the first of its kind in mainland China.
Jing Yaping’s predecessor, Ma Ningyu, was investigated while serving as the mayor of Guiyang in August 2024. On July 24, 2025, Ma Ningyu was expelled from the Party and placed under investigation. He was accused of engaging in power-for-money exchanges, seeking benefits in land acquisition and demolition, project cooperation, land auctions, and illegally accepting substantial sums of money.
It is understood that the Guizhou Big Data Administration has issued over 1,000 bidding documents in recent years, involving numerous companies, some of which have questionable backgrounds. This includes situations where the legal representatives frequently change, and the bidding records are singular, showing anomalies.