China’s corruption busters shame city boss for wasting US$21 billion on vanity projects that failed and ran up heavy debts
- The case of a former Guizhou official who left a city at risk of default for spending large sums in the hope of impressing his bosses featured on prime-time TV
- The programme suggests that the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the country’s graft watchdog, will target the misuse of public funds this year
The case of Li Zaiyong, 61, the former Communist Party secretary of Guiyang, the capital of the southern province of Guizhou, featured in a prime-time documentary on the state broadcaster CCTV.
He was placed under investigation in March 2023 and stripped of his party membership and official positions in November 2023 by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), China’s top corruption agency.
The commission, the country’s top anti-corruption body, attacked him for “showing off” with overambitious projects that wasted public money and caused severe environmental damage, as well as running up debts that breached regulations and raised the default risk.
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The CCDI is currently meeting to set its priorities for the new year, an annual event that, in recent years, has coincided with a series of documentaries jointly produced with CCTV to highlight high-profile corruption cases involving senior officials.
The programme about Li’s case focused on his record as party chief in Liupanshui, the province’s second city, between 2013 and 2017.
During that time he admitted to borrowing more than 150 billion yuan to finance 23 large-scale tourism projects, “regardless of the actual local financial capacity”.
The debt amounted to more than 10 per cent of the city’s GDP in 2017, with the interest payments alone amounting to more than 900 million yuan.
Liupanshui is a popular tourist destination in the mountainous west of the province known for its cool summer temperatures. But 16 of Li’s tourism initiatives were failures that have since been listed as inefficient and idle by the provincial authorities.
“I hoped to push some big plans … and create a big bang, so that I could attract the attention of my superiors. It was my own selfishness,” Li told the documentary.
“I would definitely not borrow [such a big sum of money], if it was my personal project,” he confessed. “But it was for government projects and the government will repay it.”
He also said he knew that “in a few years, I will change [jobs] and leave. Whoever takes over will bear the responsibility.”
The documentary also said Li’s underlings in Liupanshui had followed his example by recklessly borrowing money for their own pet projects. They also mortgaged government lands multiple times for funds that were channelled into those schemes.
The documentary also said that Li had caused the local agricultural industry heavy losses by devoting 473,482 hectares (1.17 million acres) of unsuitable land to growing chestnut roses, a type of flowering plant cultivated in Guizhou for food and medicine.
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“I studied agriculture, and I know the soil is not suitable for that plant,” Li said, confessing he ordered the project to “pursue his own selfish interests”.
The plantations he set up had very poor yields and some have had no harvest for several years.
Li spent most of his political career in Guizhou, serving as Guiyang’s mayor before taking over as the boss of Liupanshui.
He spent a few months as the secretary general of Guizhou’s provincial committee in 2017 before being named as Guiyang party chief in August that year.
That appointment coincided with Sun Zhigang taking over as provincial party chief after his predecessor, Chen Miner, a member of the current Politburo, moved to take charge of Chongqing.
Sun was detained by the CCDI on suspicion of corruption in August last year, five months after his retirement from the national legislative body.
