Chart of the Day: 120 Senior Officials Have Faced Graft Charges Since 2014

Since President Xi Jinping kicked off his anti-corruption campaign after coming to power in 2012, a total of 120 high-ranking officials at or above the deputy-provincial or deputy-ministerial level have been charged with corruption offenses.

Excluding Guo Boxiong — a retired vice chairman of the powerful Central Military Commission who was sentenced to life for corruption — as the cash involved in his case was not revealed, the other 119 officials took bribes worth 7.7 billion yuan ($1.1 billion) in total, nearly the equivalent of 0.01% of China’s gross domestic product in 2017.

The first high-ranking bureaucrat caught in the anti-corruption campaign was Wang Suyi, a top official in the Inner Mongolia autonomous region, who was accused of pocketing 11 million yuan and was sentenced to life in prison in July 2014. The number of officials charged with corruption peaked at 40 in 2017. This was down to 23 in the first 11 months of this year.

Since 2014, a total of 24 officials have been accused of taking bribes worth more than 100 million yuan in total.

Graphic: Gao Baiyu/Caixin

Contact reporter Tang Ziyi (ziyitang@caixin.com)