On August 28th, former Party Committee Secretary and Director of the Standing Committee of the Shanghai Municipal People’s Congress, Dong Yunhu, was sentenced to life imprisonment by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and all his personal assets were confiscated.
Dong Yunhu was accused of using his positions as Director of the Seventh Bureau of the Central Propaganda Department, a member of the Standing Committee of the Tibet Autonomous Region Party Committee, Minister of the Propaganda Department, and Minister of the Shanghai Municipal Committee to provide assistance to relevant units and individuals in financing, land transfers, enterprise operations, and personnel arrangements from 2002 to 2023, illegally accepting more than 148 million yuan in cash and property equivalents from these units and individuals.
As a result, Dong Yunhu was convicted of bribery and sentenced to life imprisonment, with his personal assets being confiscated.
At the age of 60, Dong Yunhu served in the CCP’s propaganda department for a long time. He was transferred to a member of the Standing Committee of the Tibet Autonomous Region Party Committee and Minister of the Propaganda Department at the end of 2011, and in August 2015, he became a member of the Standing Committee of the Shanghai Municipal Committee and Minister of the Propaganda Department. He was appointed Chairman of the Shanghai Municipal Political Consultative Conference in January 2018, and in January 2023, he became the Party Group Secretary and Director of the Standing Committee of the Shanghai Municipal People’s Congress.
Half a year later, on July 12th, he was taken down, and on December 12th, he was officially investigated.
He is the first provincial and ministerial-level high-ranking CCP official to fall from grace after the 20th Congress, as well as the “first tiger” in Shanghai after the 20th Congress. Both before and after his investigation, several officials associated with him were dealt with, including former Chairman of Shanghai Fengxian Transportation Energy (Group) Qu Jianping, former Chairman of Guangming Real Estate Group Shen Hongze, and the discipline inspection secretary of Shanghai Natural Gas Pipeline Network Co., Ltd., Chen Yang, among many other state-owned enterprise executives.
On the day Dong Yunhu fell from power, Xiao Xing, a member of the CCP Committee and Vice General Manager of the China Pacific Insurance Group Limited Liability Company, was taken away. The day after Dong Yunhu was taken down, on July 13, 2023, Cheng Feng, Chairman of ThePaper.cn and Vice General Manager of Shanghai News Group, was investigated.
Apart from Dong Yunhu and Cheng Feng, another high-ranking official in the Shanghai propaganda system was taken down. On November 18, 2022, Xu Shiping, former Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee, President, and Editor-in-Chief of Shanghai Oriental Network Co., Ltd., who had been retired for more than two years, was investigated.
Subsequently, several officials and executives of state-owned enterprises in the Shanghai state-owned enterprise system were investigated, including Bai Tinghui, then Secretary of the Party Committee and Director of Shanghai State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, Yan Jun, former CEO of Shanghai Port Group, Pan Deqing, former Deputy CEO of Shanghai Pharmaceuticals Group, Zhou Jun, CEO of Shanghai Industrial (Group) Co., Ltd., and Liu Chong, Chairman and Executive Director of China Shipping Development Co., Ltd.
In addition, after Dong Yunhu fell from power, Liu Yibing, his mistress and host of Dong Fang Wei Shi at Shanghai TV Station, was also taken away. Liu was reportedly promoted to a member of the Shanghai Political Consultative Conference with Dong Yunhu’s help. Public records show that Liu was a member of the 13th and 14th Shanghai Political Consultative Conference.
The CCP’s official announcement stated that Dong Yunhu engaged in “private exchanges” of member qualifications for the Political Consultative Conference, facilitated power, money, and sex transactions, interfered in judicial activities, and engaged in power and money transactions. It is rumored that Dong Yunhu’s downfall is related to internal CCP power struggles.
Dong Yunhu was also a former Deputy Director of the State Council Information Office and is known as one of the CCP’s earliest scholars studying the “human rights issues” and one of the drafters of the CCP’s first “Human Rights White Paper” for propaganda.