The recent “sexual blackmail case” in which Xu, a 90-year-old female auxiliary police officer in Jiangsu, China, was sentenced to 13 years in prison and fined 5 million yuan has exploded in Chinese public opinion. Four police officers, including two deputy directors and two police station chiefs, and five other public officials were involved in the case, refusing to believe that they were all married men who cheated on their wives, but were judicially recognized as victims. The court ruled at first instance that the woman, the defendant, was guilty of extortion, sentenced to 13 years in prison and fined 5 million yuan, and the total amount of 3.728 million yuan it demanded from the nine victims mentioned above will be recovered according to the law.
After the verdict of the People’s Court of Gounan County, Jiangsu Province on this case was forwarded by netizens, the Chinese network public opinion was in an uproar, causing various reactions and questions.
The first question: public officials “were extorted” Where did the huge amount of money come from?
The verdict shows that the nine victims had an affair with the accused female auxiliary police officers in the five years from 2014 to 2019, maintaining an inappropriate relationship for as little as one or two months and as much as one or two years, during which the women either asked for money on the grounds of pregnancy, down payment for a house or compensation for a breakup, or threatened to report to the other party’s unit, denounce to their families and other rhetoric, as little as one or two hundred thousand, as much as a million, in total, from the hands of the victims 3.726 million yuan (RMB, the same below).
The verdict also shows that Xu Mou “extortion” of the nine victims, including four police officers, including the deputy director of the Gouyun County Public Security Bureau, the deputy director of the Lianyungang City Haizhou District Public Security Bureau, and two police station chiefs, several other people, including the principal of the elementary school, the chairman of the labor union, the vice president of the hospital and the hospital pharmacy staff, and one person’s position Unknown.
Strangely enough, none of the victims, who were police officers and officials of any size, reported the case, and only Liu Xiangbing, deputy director of the Lianyungang City Haizhou District Public Security Bureau, who had two affairs with the defendant Xu, was investigated for a bribery case, which led to Xu’s extortion case. Xu demanded an amount starting at 100,000 yuan, all paid in cash.
Many netizens have asked why the victims were extorted so much money by Xu, and why the authorities did not investigate whether the source of their money was legal and whether there was any connection with corruption and bribery.
Independent commentator Dr. Shen Du asked, “Those so-called victims, where did they get the hundreds of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions of cash at every turn? Why did Xu obediently take it out as soon as he asked them for it? Is there any illegal income in this? The official did not look deeper, the media did not disclose even more.”
Question 2: Is the sentence decisive and accurate? Is the sentence appropriate?
The court sentenced a female auxiliary police officer of low social status to a heavy sentence, and a cadre of officials of all sizes involved in the case were not investigated and pursued, but instead recovered all the funds involved for them, which was much criticized by public opinion.
The Chinese official media Xinhua News Agency also commented on the matter, saying, “The public questioned whether these public officials were investigated and punished after the incident. In the face of public skepticism, the relevant local departments must not delete the post, public answer is the right thing to do.”
At the same Time, some people believe that Xu in five years and nine married men and women in promiscuous relationships, and the lion’s share of the price, to ruin the reputation of public officials, career prospects or Family blackmail, should be severely punished. Some people believe that the young female auxiliary police also have faults, but not to such a heavy sentence, the fine so hard. Some people even think that the relationship with nine local prominent men for five years, has not turned into a formal police, but ate a lawsuit, accompanied by youth and reputation, is “mutton did not eat, but stirred up a fuss”.
The company’s main business is to provide a wide range of products and services to the public. In this case, it is common sense that the male partner should give the younger woman some financial compensation.
Liu Sixin himself was charged with extortion and sentenced to four years in prison many years ago when he discovered that his wife had been repeatedly sexually harassed by the leader of his unit and was angry enough to beat him up and demand compensation for moral damages. The case, in which the legal expert was wrongly convicted and sentenced to prison, received much attention in the Chinese legal community at the time.
Liu Sixin pointed out that the crime of extortion can be denied, must look at whether the cause of the incident, if ignoring the cause, only look at the consequences, any claim may be designated as extortion.
Liu Sixin said, Xu as a party to the case has reason to demand compensation, is a cause, there are underlying facts, completely legitimate, as for the amount of compensation, there is no need to discuss. He pointed out that if the compensation party if they think the amount is too unreasonable, they can go to civil court instead of making it a criminal case.
Crisis management by local authorities
Just as online public opinion was just beginning to build up tremendous pressure on the court’s decision, the court in Gounan County withdrew the first trial verdict from the Internet. The cyber police also called to ask the netizens who had reposted the verdict to delete their posts, which was refused.
A few days later, Xu’s family disclosed that the court of second instance, Lianyungang Central Court, had assigned a legal aid defender to Xu and rejected two Shanghai criminal defense lawyers hired by the family for Xu. This arrangement of denying the defendant’s right to defense is identical to the Tianjin Second Intermediate Court’s handling of the 709 case.
The aforementioned move to withdraw the verdict and ask netizens to delete posts, as well as the second trial court Lianyungang Central Court’s practice of forcibly appointing official lawyers and rejecting the lawyers hired by the family, have raised more questions.
Xu’s family’s reaction
Late on March 17, Xu’s uncle posted on Weibo, “the court said it had commissioned two legal aid lawyers, no defense quota, and said it was my niece’s own will, but did not provide any written material to prove their claim, but also refused our request to verify whether the commissioning of legal aid lawyers is my niece’s own true will. “
The uncle pointed out in the microblogging account with the screen name “female auxiliary police officer Xu Mou family”: “Those public officials, all in their forties and fifties, in the community of dignified figures, in age, experience, social status and other aspects, are not equal, whether they have coercion, threats and other means to my niece. So far it is not known. I hope that this can be found out in the second trial.”
The microblogging site reads, “Xu’s Parents still believe that these public officials bullied their daughter and dragged her down with them. She was only an auxiliary police officer, and before being an auxiliary police officer only worked in the hospital, these ‘victims’ are leaders, some of them are also her top supervisors, it is likely that her supervisors used their authority to lure and coerce her into a relationship. The money given afterwards is just hush money, breakup fees, and compensation.”
The new media “Red Star News” of Chengdu Media Group, which focuses on hot news, interviewed Xu’s father after the case was fermented all over the Internet. He stressed, “They are all public officials, they shouldn’t bully my daughter. The money they gave my daughter was given voluntarily, so how can you say it was extortion? If my daughter was blackmailed, why didn’t they call the police at that time? Some of them are police officers. My daughter did not take money out of their pockets or rob them. As public officials, they bullied my daughter and played with her, and it was they who made the mistake.”
However, the Red Star News quickly deleted the interview report.
Lei Zhengfu case rehash?
Liu Xiaoyuan, a lawyer at the former Beijing Fengrui Law Firm, pointed out to Voice of America that it is now popular for many corrupt officials in China to have lovers, and they all spend huge amounts of money for their lovers, especially breakup fees. He analyzed Xu’s possible lover relationships with those public officials.
Liu Xiaoyuan said, “The majority of the cases that have been identified by the discipline inspection and supervision, the corrupt officials that have been sentenced by the court, they have a lover relationship. This lover relationship is also to spend a huge amount of money. Especially after the breakup. So I’m wondering if Xu is a lover’s relationship with them? And not like Zhao Hongxia immediately extort you. But said Xu Mou this case special. Yes, this only from the full case file materials to see how the witnesses say, Xu Mou how to say.”
The former Beijing lawyer, who is currently unemployed in his hometown, said Zhao Hongxia, the heroine of the Lei Zhengfu indecent video case that occurred more than eight years ago, was sentenced to two years probation for her involvement in more than a dozen cases of blackmail and extortion with party officials in Chongqing as prey, and Xiao Ye, the main culprit in the case, was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
Lei Zhengfu, who served as secretary of the Communist Party’s Beibei District Committee in Chongqing, a city dominated by Bo Xilai, fell from grace after his surreptitiously filmed indecent video was exposed in November 2012 on the People’s Watchdog website hosted by citizen journalist Zhu Ruifeng.
Lei Zhengfu’s sex scandal was also a sensation when it came to light that the court’s characterization of the case as extortion and sentencing did not raise many questions or controversies.
Nowadays, some netizens also compare Xu with Zhao Hongxia, who caused a group of corrupt officials to fall in Chongqing, saying that the 90-year-old female auxiliary police officer slept with a suspected corrupt public officials. Some netizens even used cartoons to satirize the case as “a large group of Ximenqing to Pan Jinlian to sue”.
Some commentators have linked Xu’s extortion case to the ancient classics such as “Yang Naiwu and the Little Cabbage” and “The Woman’s Justice”, which recounted the conviction of a faint official and the eventual redress of grievances.
According to history scholar Jiang Nanqiang, the extortion case of female auxiliary police officers and “Yang Naiwu and the Little Cabbage,” one of the four most bizarre cases of the late Qing Dynasty, seem to have something in common, as they are both games between vulnerable women and a strong government society.
Beijing-based history scholar Zhang Lifan rewrote the famous Peking Opera song “The Woman Rises to the Rescue” and tweeted it, quoting the play’s dialogue: “Only God knows if justice is done.”
Maoists rage against judicial injustice
The sentence handed down to Xu, a female auxiliary police officer, and the treatment of those involved in the case by local authorities drew criticism from some Maoist commentators, with a distinctly classist tone.
The leftist literary figure Sima Nan has made several episodes of his YouTube (oil pipe) account on the case, comparing the poor policewoman to Maslova, the prostitute-bound heroine of Tolstoy’s Resurrection, and questioning the possibility that Xu was wrongly sentenced by the first instance court. He believes that those identified as victims of the system and no background Xu Mou there has been an inappropriate male and female relationship, or lover relationship.
Sima Nan: “Because there is a relationship, not okay. In accordance with common sense you give some compensation how? This thing you identify it as a crime of extortion, many people think unfair. You sleep with people’s daughters for nothing, and then send them in, get their money back, and fined them 5 million, cheating them for 13 years. This girl has no background, poor family, right? Our law can claim such facts? But that’s what the court in Gounan ruled.”
Another Maoist commentator, Zhang Hongliang, who has a large fan base, posted: “A group of officials in Gounan County, Jiangsu Province, played with a girl in her 20s separately and then, through the court, fined her more than 3.7 million yuan for “buying sex”, “compensation”, and “sex”. “compensation fee”, “break-up fee”, to extortion charges back, but also the girl was insulted by the damage was played with 13 years in prison, a fine of 5 million.”
Zhang Hongliang uses a classist view to criticize the unfairness of the local court’s first instance verdict, pointing out that the reason why the court in Gounan County handed down such a sentence to Xu was not because of her behavior, but because of her status.
Zhang Hongliang writes: She (Xu) is the same as Tess who was sent to the gallows by the Debs …… She was tried as a representative of the poor class, just like the exiled Marcellois in Resurrection, and was tried to suppress the struggles of the poor class – just struggles, not resistance – …… It has nothing at all to do with law and crime.
The commentator, who is a frequent contributor to the Maoist website Wu You Xiang, argues that the officials who ruined Xu Yan’s youth and Life are even more guilty and should be severely punished. He noted that the vast majority of them were Communist Party cadres, “seriously tarnishing the image of our Party, a serious crime against the Chinese Communist Party.”
Hu Xijin: hope that the second trial has an accurate verdict
In contrast to the views of Sima Nan and Zhang Hongliang, Hu Xijin, editor-in-chief of the Global Times, clearly tilted his judgment to the side of the first trial court’s verdict. He commented that Xu used similar means to extort nine people with whom she had sexual relations, and believed that the characterization of her extortion was correct, and did not think there was room for argument in it.
However, Hu Xijin’s comments also leave some room for a possible change of sentence in the second trial.
He said: Some people have raised the question of whether the sentence is too heavy and whether it is reasonable to ask for a full refund and a fine, but I think such controversies do not break through the normal fermentation of public opinion. Xu has appealed and the second trial is pending, and I hope the judge will hear the case strictly according to the law and give an accurate final verdict in full view of the public.”
The head of the Communist Party newspaper, who is considered politically astute, added that he hoped everyone would finally accept the final verdict and bring the case to a fair conclusion under the rule of law.
Dissenting voices within the system
Notably, some judicial officials within the system also disagreed with the local court’s first instance verdict in the case.
Xiao Youliang of the People’s Procuratorate of Chengbu Miao Autonomous County in Hunan Province argued that Xu has the right to disclose, and that the law does not prohibit Xu from disclosing the common privacy between himself and those “victims. Therefore, Xu does not exist in the sense of the criminal law to publish the privacy of others threatened to extort other people’s property, that is, does not meet the elements of extortion crime.
The prosecutor wrote in his personal space online, “The case is wrongly characterized, guilty verdict there is obvious gender discrimination, blatant protection of public officials sleeping with girls in white, a serious violation of public order and morality, seriously affecting the image of the party and the government, the court of second instance should quickly correct the wrong case and stop the damage in time.”
Experts talk about the problems exposed by the case
According to public information as well as local official statements, so far, in addition to Liu Xiangbing, who was promoted to deputy director of the Public Security Bureau, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for the crime of bribery, the other victims involved in the case were only subject to party discipline and administrative sanctions.
Dr. Liu Sixin, a doctor of law, pointed out that the case exposed the proliferation of local public security officers who are in charge of large public powers playing with the opposite sex, and that once things go wrong, local political and legal committees and leaders of relevant units protect their own image and interests by shielding their subordinates and heavily punishing the insignificant parties.
Liu Sixin, a former U.S.-based jurist, also said he agreed that Xu’s heavy sentence was “a sentence for the lowly people.
Chen Jiangang, a former Chinese human rights lawyer who studied law in the U.S., pointed out that, judging from common sense, Xu, who was involved in the case, probably sought to turn her position as an auxiliary police officer into a full-fledged police officer, and was raped by some Communist Party members, and that the nine public officials with whom she had an affair may not be the only ones disclosed in the verdict.
Chen said that it cannot be said that the girl herself is not at fault, but the moral quality or private life of an individual is not the focus of people’s attention at the moment, while for the public power, it has to be scrutinized.
He said: “This case is obviously the sky is high in the county government seat those officials use public power to obtain benefits. With power for personal gain, this private may be power and money transactions, power and sex transactions, power and power transactions. In the final analysis, it is still true that this is a dictatorship, and dictatorship and corruption follow each other, and are two sides of the same coin. It is impossible to preserve dictatorship and get rid of corruption at the same time.”
Independent commentator Shen Du sees the incident as a huge scandal in the so-called new era of high-profile anti-corruption and anti-gang efforts by Chinese authorities.
He said, “The hasty re-sentencing of the female auxiliary police officers and the lighter release of the officials greatly amplified an already huge scandal. This scandal occurred nine years after Xi Jinping‘s anti-corruption campaign, or rather during the seven or eight years of his high-profile anti-corruption campaign, while sexual bribery was proliferating at the grassroots level in China. So it has to be said that this kind of directed anti-corruption campaign launched from the highest levels is still far from the kind of universal, law-based, non-discriminatory anti-corruption that modern citizens demand.”
Three Possible Endings
The court verdict in the female auxiliary police case, which has provoked much debate and strong questions from Chinese netizens, was widely circulated online just after the closing of the two sessions in Beijing, and the public opinion is still fermenting.
The next focus of attention will be on the second trial of the female auxiliary police extortion case in Lianyungang City Central Court to see if the outcome will be the Yang Naiwu and Cabbage type ending reversal that many are expecting, or if the crime will remain unchanged as some official media have implied, with only a reduced punishment in terms of sentencing.
At the same time, some observers believe that the Chinese Communist authorities, who only care about the security and stability of the regime, will not be moved by public opinion, but will insist that “this example must not be opened and this wind must not grow”, and will ultimately maintain the original sentence of the first trial as usual. Some predict that public opinion will likely erupt into another uproar by then.
(Original title: female auxiliary police “blackmail case”: the trial of justice, or the poor sentence?
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