China executes former senior banker for taking over $156m in bribes

According to state media, China executed a former executive of a major asset management company under state supervision for wrongdoing.

The broadcaster stated that Bai was executed in Tianjin on Tuesday morning, December 8, 2025, following a meeting with close relatives, but it did not say how.

According to state broadcaster CCTV, Bai Tianhui, the former general manager of China Huarong International Holdings (CHIH), was found guilty of collecting around $156 million (R2.66 billion) while providing favorable treatment in the financing and acquisition of projects between 2014 and 2018.

CHIH is a subsidiary of China Huarong Asset Management, which focuses on bad-debt management as one of the country’s largest asset management funds.

Huarong has been a major target of President Xi Jinping’s years-long graft crackdown, with its former chairman Lai Xiaomin executed in January 2021 for receiving bribes worth $253 million.

Several other Huarong executives have also been snared in anti-corruption investigations.

Death sentences for corruption in China are often issued with a two-year reprieve and then commuted to life in prison.

But Bai’s sentence, first handed down in May 2024 by a court in the northern city of Tianjin, was not suspended