On the morning of January 21, 2025, the Organization Department of the Chinese Communist Party announced that Sun Meijun had been appointed as the Party Secretary of the General Administration of Customs. As per the usual practice of the CCP, Sun Meijun will also serve as the Director of the General Administration of Customs. His predecessor, Yu Jianhua, the former Director of the General Administration of Customs, was officially announced to have passed away suddenly due to illness in December last year, although there were rumors circulating that he had committed suicide.
Public records show that the newly appointed Party Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party’s General Administration of Customs, Sun Meijun, was born in July 1965 in Kaijiang, Sichuan. He is a candidate member of the 20th Central Committee of the CCP.
Sun Meijun previously held positions such as the Director of Food Safety and Comprehensive Department (Secretary-General of the State Food Safety Office) of the State Administration for Market Regulation. In 2017, he was appointed as the Deputy Director of the State Administration for Food and Drug Administration, and in 2018, he became the Deputy Director of the State Administration for Market Regulation. In 2020, he was appointed as a member of the Beijing Municipal Committee and Minister of the United Front Work Department. In 2021, he served as a member of the Beijing Municipal Committee and Minister of the Organization Department. In 2023, he was appointed as the Deputy Secretary of the Henan Provincial Party Committee and Secretary of the Provincial Political and Legal Affairs Committee.
The former Director of the General Administration of Customs, Yu Jianhua, was reported to have committed suicide in his office on the night of December 10 last year after being summoned for questioning by the Discipline Inspection Commission the day before. However, on the late night of December 11, the General Administration of Customs issued an obituary stating that Yu had “passed away due to sudden illness that could not be saved.”
Multiple online sources claimed that Yu Jianhua had shot himself, and his death was related to the case of Sun Yuning, the former Deputy Director of the General Administration of Customs who was investigated in September last year.
Official media Xinhua had reported that on December 10 last year, Jilin Provincial Party Secretary Huang Qiang, Deputy Secretary of the Provincial Party Committee and Governor Hu Yuting, held a working meeting in Beijing with the Director and Party Secretary of the General Administration of Customs, Yu Jianhua. However, by December 11, the news report had been taken down.
Abnormal deaths of Chinese Communist Party officials have become frequent, but due to official cover-ups, the true causes of their deaths remain a mystery.
For example, in April 2020, there were rumors surrounding the abnormal death of Liao Guoxun, the Mayor of Tianjin, yet the official obituary stated that Liao Guoxun “passed away due to a sudden illness that could not be saved.” In October 2019, it was reported that Ren Xuefeng, Deputy Secretary of the Chongqing Municipal Party Committee, died from falling from a building in Beijing, and the official obituary also mentioned that Ren Xuefeng “passed away due to ineffective medical treatment.” On the morning of October 21, 2018, it was officially reported that Zheng Xiaosong, the Director of the Liaison Office of the Central People’s Government in Macau, fell to his death at his residence in Macau the previous evening due to suffering from depression. There were rumors circulating that Zheng Xiaosong had committed suicide.