If you get caught in China, Vietnam, or Singapore the penalties for white collar criminals is zero tolerance. You can’t buy your way out if you do something so spectacular that you cause the government to lose face.

You might as well go jump off a building or a bridge cause you’re done for.

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/china-executes-ex...

https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/comments/uvm7oy/i...

But, are these sort of things just examples of selective prosecution? Would the inner circle members of CCP leadership realistically face the same prosecution and sentencing, if they were to be caught doing the same?

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Whistleblower Yang Hai already reported Yang Youlin for his economic misconduct in July 2008. The whistleblower was detained because of the report at Nov 21st, 2008.

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People's comment on this matter around March, 2009:

哇塞！终于有人敢动杨友林啦，杨海好样的。杨友林此人早该除无奈碍于他的势力。除掉杨友林大快人心。Wow! Finally, someone dares to take action against Yang Youlin. Good job, Yang Hai. That guy should have been dealt with long ago, but we were stuck with his influence. Getting rid of him is incredibly satisfying.

不杀此贪官，难平民愤。If you don't execute this corrupt official, you won't appease the public's anger.

江宁有一个传说，谁也动不了杨永林！There's a legend in Jiangning: nobody can touch Yang Youlin!

他的保护伞是谁？Who is protecting him?

希望引起中央的重视！I hope this gets the attention of the central government!

现在社会怎么啦？好多天了根本没人关注这件事？是上层没有看到？还是视而不见？还是怕牵连自己？What's going on with society lately? It's been days and no one is paying attention to this! Did the higher-ups miss it? Are they turning a blind eye? Or are they just afraid of getting dragged into it?

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Since the report, there were several pieces of news about "the investigation about Yang Youlin is ongoing", but no real progress until 2023.

One thing that China does should be adopted in the West.

For instance, high level executive Bryan Malinowski was executed by the ATF and barely anyone noticed, but if the courts had sentenced him in such way, there would be great outrage.

And that’s if they’re ever charged at all, which is rare.

In North Korea, you get a death sentence for even something a lot smaller.

is it prone to abuse by those who yield power - Yes!

however - the alternative - where corruption goes unchecked is even worse!! if you come from a poor country e.g in Africa - you would've experienced the effects of corruption.

American are now experiencing it now - & the country is already worse off. though before corruption in American was used as an incentive mechanism - now it's just pure grift.

so yeah sentencing one or two people to death explicitly is the humane outcome vs sentencing thousands to death implicitly.

Additionally, there are two noteworthy aspects regarding the unique characteristics of Chinese law:

(1) The characteristic of "politics over law" in China has gained increasing approval online. Previously, many people admired and envied Western judicial independence, but more and more people are realizing the drawbacks of this system.

(2) China has always been very cautious regarding the execution of the death penalty. Even during the feudal dynasties, official executions remained rare and typically required imperial review. In essence, China still operates under a model of governance by Confucian elites.

But I gotta say something: if the EU or the US were to kill politicians taking in bribes, there wouldn't be many politicians left.

Society cannot work with too many corrupt civil servants. Yes, "autocrats", "civil liberties", and yet - the guy slurped up $325M to put his finger on the scale, not to change the model of governance.

I wish we in the west took corruption more seriously, but I suppose we're more interested in cage fights on the lawn these days.

Tariffs on all things Chinese is pretty much an open admission that the West can't compete.

1. strong defensive positions float to the top... which could be astroturfing.

2. the merits of the concept aren't discussed; the convo falls back to whataboutism.

maybe it's all fair, but on a site where everyone's ~anonymous, it's hard to take the discussion at face value.

Is he dumb? Surely he is smart enough to know he committed a capital crime and yet he kept doing it. Perhaps he only kept doing it because he believed he could somehow get away with it? Perhaps he saw others pull off the same stunt? Or perhaps he had the political capital to keep himself out of trouble and is now facing justice because he rubbed someone higher up the wrong way?

Is the prosecution dumb? 300 million is no small money are they really so incompetent that over the course of 30 years they could not find anything wrong with this guy? Perhaps they had a reason to keep him around? Perhaps he had them in his pocket? Perhaps he had the connection to fuck up anyone who dares investigating him? Perhaps they never meant to care about corruption anyway and only went after him because someone somewhere issued an order and they are just charging him for corruption because the true reason is less convenient?

China has invested a lot in whitewashing its public image these days. Every young left leaning westerner is salivating at the idea of a Chinese century because they somehow convinced themselves that the Chinese has the solution to everything that went wrong in the west. It's sad to see it spreading even to this website.