BEIJING – China has executed Bai Tianhui, a former senior banker sentenced to death for corruption amounting to 1.1 billion yuan, or more than Rp2.5 trillion. The execution took place on Tuesday.
This is the latest corruption crackdown by Chinese President Xi Jinping’s government. Bai, the former general manager of asset management firm China Huarong International Holdings, was executed in the northern city of Tianjin. According to prosecutors, Bai abused his position at the state-owned offshore investment firm between 2014 and 2018, after accepting massive bribes totaling 1.1 billion yuan.
In a statement, the court said: “The amount of bribes received by Bai Tianhui was enormous, the circumstances of the crime were extremely serious, and the social impact was extremely severe.”
It added that Bai’s crimes had harmed the interests of the state and the Chinese people and therefore required severe punishment in accordance with applicable law. The Supreme People’s Court, China’s highest court, said the facts of the case were clear and the evidence against Bai was conclusive and sufficient, making the sentence appropriate. Officials did not detail how Bai was executed, but said he was allowed to meet with close relatives beforehand.
The Tianjin High People’s Court upheld the death sentence after rejecting his appeal on February 24. In China, death sentences handed down by lower courts must be submitted for review to the Supreme People’s Court. China Huarong International Holdings was established to handle bad loans from state-owned banks and was renamed China Citic Financial Assets Management after a government-organized rescue in 2021.
The company was one of four established in 1999 to help clear the mountain of bad debts that was choking China’s banking system. It later expanded into investment, lending, and property businesses. Bai was the second senior executive from the company to be executed for corruption.
Lai Xiaomin, the former boss of Tianui, was executed in January 2021, a month after being found guilty of accepting 1.8 billion yuan in bribes and embezzling more than 25 million yuan of public assets. He was also found guilty of bigamy after living with a woman “as husband and wife for a long time” outside of his marriage and having a child out of wedlock.
China’s anti-corruption watchdog, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, detained 54 state regulators, bankers, and senior financial executives in the first nine months of this year, according to a tally from the South China Morning Post on Thursday (December 11, 2025). Last year, a total of 97 senior financial executives were dismissed.
