Wanting Qu, pop star girlfriend of Vancouver’s mayor, ‘confident’ of justice in mother’s Chinese death penalty case

China’s criminal courts have a conviction rate of more than 99 per cent, but Vancouver-based pop star Wanting Qu, girlfriend of the city’s mayor, said she was confident about the outcome of her mother’s corruption trial, in which she faces the death penalty.

Qu on Saturday issued a statement on the drawn-out case in the mainland against her mother, Qu Zhang Mingjie, a former Harbin official accused of embezzling 350 million yuan (US$52 million) in a supposed real estate scam.

Qu wrote on her Weibo social media page that the court’s year-long consideration of the case suggested that her mother’s defence was being taken seriously, and she expected a just result from the Chinese legal system.

Zhang, 61, was in charge of a 2009 transfer of state land in Heilongjiang province that allegedly led to it illicitly ending up in the hands of a property developer. Hundreds of impoverished farmers who had lived in dormitories on the land supposedly suffered as a result.

She was charged last year with embezzlement, bribery and abusing power, and prosecutors asked the Harbin City Intermediate People’s Court to have her executed. She denied the charges.

Qu wrote that the case had not reached the final sentencing phase despite the trial having taken place last July 19, “indicating that the court is handling the case very carefully, and the views of the defence are important”.