A Shanghai police chief traded sex for promotions and took millions in bribes
Tang Lina, the former head of the Fengxian district branch of the Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau, was removed from office in May 2021 and sentenced to 12 years in prison in November 2022 after being found guilty of accepting bribes totaling more than 24 million yuan. She had never married and had no children.
Recent accounts published on Sohu, a mainland Chinese internet platform, by a verified commentator writing under the pen name “Mo Qingyan” laid out the mechanics of her rise in unusual detail. According to those accounts, Tang began cultivating relationships with senior officers across the public security system as early as 1995, accompanying them to dinners and outings and maintaining long-term sexual relationships with multiple male superiors. Those relationships propelled her through a succession of posts: deputy section chief of a command division, section chief of the political department, and eventually deputy Party secretary of the Shanghai Public Security Rail and Transit Brigade.
According to the Epoch Times, alongside that patronage network, Tang ran a parallel corruption operation. She accepted bribes in exchange for approvals on personnel transfers, routine administrative decisions, and construction contract awards. Wealthy families whose children faced criminal charges paid her directly to make problems disappear; a single such payment routinely exceeded one million yuan. Some business owners took a different approach, offering her high-interest loans as a mechanism for extracting wealth while maintaining a veneer of transactional legitimacy.
Bribe money financed her younger lovers and cosmetic upkeep
The disclosure that attracted the most attention concerned Tang’s personal life. She reportedly believed that sustained contact with young men slowed her physical aging, so she regularly invited groups of young male subordinates to her home and frequented upscale private clubs where she paid for male escorts and models. She formalized some of these relationships by presenting herself to outsiders as the men’s “godmother” while privately maintaining them as long-term lovers.
To keep these men close, Tang gave them luxury cars, high-end watches, designer goods, and large cash transfers. She also attempted to place several of them illegally inside the public security apparatus, folding them into her patronage network. The arrangement worked in both directions: businessmen who learned of her tastes bankrolled her entertainment at high-end venues, covering the tab in exchange for access and contracts. Her vanity was another channel for extraction. Tang spent tens of thousands of yuan per year on cosmetic procedures at upscale medical aesthetic clinics, the funds drawn from her bribe income.
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In May 2021, investigators had records of her spending at specific private clubs dating back to 2017. According to the accounts that have circulated, she was in a private room at one such club with her “godsons” when investigators came to take her away.
Her rise was made possible partly by the protection of Gong Dao’an, who served at the time as a deputy director of the Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau and to whom Tang had directed substantial gifts. Under his cover, she continued running Fengxian district’s police bureau for years despite the scale of her abuses.
Four other female officials ran the same patronage and bribery scheme
According to Liberty Times, Zhu Renxiu, a former deputy mayor of Nanping city in Fujian province, collected bribes through her husband, who eventually divorced her after becoming unable to tolerate her relationships with multiple senior officials. After the divorce, Zhu took on more than ten young male companions, including, reportedly, five members of China’s military. She was sentenced to ten and a half years in 2022 after being convicted of bribery. She had reportedly said publicly: “A woman playing men has to maintain standards, or the investment isn’t worth it.”
Zhong Yang, a former deputy Party secretary and governor of Qiannan prefecture in Guizhou province, had sexual relationships with 58 male subordinates, according to reporting in the South China Morning Post. Some entered the arrangements voluntarily in exchange for promotions; others, sources said, felt unable to refuse given her authority over their careers. Local residents reportedly said she made no effort to conceal her behavior. She was sentenced to 13 years in 2024 after being convicted of accepting 60 million yuan in bribes.
Jiang Baohong, a former deputy mayor of Wuwei city in Gansu province, had relationships with more than 40 officials, 17 of whom were her superiors, Caixin Global reported. Accounts describe her using sexual compliance as leverage to climb from a low-ranking position to a municipal deputy mayor post.
An Huijun, who served as head of the Luohu district branch of the Shenzhen Public Security Bureau and later as deputy director of Shenzhen’s port authority, accepted 2.1 million yuan in bribes and coerced sexual compliance from male subordinates. She routinely designated young, physically attractive male police officers to accompany her on so-called inspection trips, making clear that cooperation would be rewarded with promotion and refusal would end a career. She was sentenced to 15 years.
The CCP’s founding leaders set the pattern, discarding wives for younger women in Yan’an
In the 1930s and 1940s, when the Communist Party was based in the caves and loose-walled compounds of Yan’an in northern Shaanxi province, the leadership engaged in a systematic pattern of discarding older wives for younger women. Mao Zedong, who ruled China from the Communist takeover in 1949 until his death in 1976, abandoned his wife Yang Kaihui for He Zizhen, who was 18 at the time. Yang was later arrested and executed. Mao then began a relationship with Jiang Qing, who became his fourth wife, while still formally married to He.
A widely circulated list of senior leaders’ marriage records, drawn from historical accounts, gives a sense of the scale. Liu Shaoqi, who served as the CCP’s head of state until Mao had him purged and destroyed during the Cultural Revolution, married six times. Ye Jianying married nine times, with a 60-year age gap between him and his youngest wife. He Long married five times, taking a wife 19 years his junior when he was 45. Zhu De, one of the founders of China’s military, married six times, taking the 17-year-old Kang Keqing as his wife when he was 43. Chen Yi took a 15-year-old bride at 36. Lin Biao married a woman 16 years younger when he was 35.
The article from which this list is drawn draws a pointed contrast: while Nationalist forces were fighting Japanese troops at the front, the CCP leadership in Yan’an was cycling through wives.
Jiang Zemin’s mistresses were rewarded with senior government posts
Jiang Zemin, who served as CCP general secretary from 1989 to 2002, is widely reported in overseas Chinese media to have maintained four long-term mistresses, all of whom reached senior positions in the Party and state apparatus.
Song Zuying, a folk singer, was awarded the rank of commander within the Chinese navy’s political department arts troupe, a largely ceremonial military title conferred by the Party that gave her access to Zhongnanhai, the walled leadership compound in Beijing where China’s top leaders live and work. Chen Zhili served as education minister, state councillor, and vice chairwoman of the National People’s Congress, the Party’s rubber-stamp legislature. Huang Liman served as deputy Party secretary of Guangdong province, Party secretary of Shenzhen, and director of the Guangdong provincial legislature. Li Ruiying served as a senior broadcaster and Party media official.
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