Over the past six months, Chinese authorities have taken particular interest in the legal proceedings of Yang Xiuzhu, a fugitive official seeking asylum in the United States. As part of their ongoing anti-corruption campaign, the Chinese regime has long hoped to recover these escapees and their plentiful, often illicit assets squirreled around the world.
The day before the New York court presiding over Yang’s case reaches a verdict concerning her asylum, she made statements published on Oct. 3 declaring that the charges against her, as well as the regime’s ongoing attempts to obtain her extradition, are politically motivated. She says she offended the former Party leader Jiang Zemin, for not cutting a deal with the latter’s son.
Officials like Yang, who escaped China in 2003, have become an increasing focus of Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign over the last year, after it expanded overseas with the “Sky Net” and “Fox Hunt” programs aimed at nabbing runaway corrupt Party members. Yang has been one of the Party’s flagship cases for repatriation, earning the dubious distinction of being declared the “number one female corrupt official.”
