Controlling People, Then Controlling Evidence? From Xu Jiayin, Chen Zhi to Zhang Youxia, Looking at Xi Jinping's Regime's "Responsibility Isolation"

English translation of the Chinese news article:

Title: Controlling People, Then Controlling Evidence? From Xu Jiayin, Chen Zhi to Zhang Youxia, Looking at Xi Jinping's Regime's "Responsibility Isolation"

Introduction: Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli were formally removed from the Central Military Commission before Xi Jinping's planned visit to the US, while Xu Jiayin was sentenced to life imprisonment. This article analyzes how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) uses selective purges to compress systemic crises into personal responsibilities and examines the boundaries of evidence.

Article: On August 20, the Shenzhen Intermediate People's Court sentenced Xu Jiayin to life imprisonment; on August 28, Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli were formally removed from the Central Military Commission. Meanwhile, the US Department of Justice and Department of the Treasury are still expanding their pursuit of Chen Zhi, the chairman of the Prince Group, and his cross-border fraud and money laundering network. The three cases, spanning real estate, cross-border financial crimes, and the military, seem unrelated but share a common problem when observed from the perspective of "who controls key individuals, who controls evidence, and who decides the scope of responsibility investigations."

When the CCP handles a high-risk individual, it means not only detention, trial, or political purge but also that the person's testimony, case files, asset disposal, lawyer access, and cooperation with foreign judicial authorities first fall under the CCP's control. Therefore, the true investigation should focus on not only "what crimes this person committed" but also "what funds, political relationships, and decision-making chains this person might reveal if they were not controlled by Beijing and instead entered the US or another independent judicial system."

The key to the Xu Jiayin case is not just the life sentence but who controls the final accounts of Evergrande.

The Supreme People's Court announced on August 20 that Xu Jiayin was sentenced to life imprisonment and had all his personal assets confiscated. The court found that Evergrande Group, Evergrande Real Estate, and Xu Jiayin had committed large-scale financial fraud, illegal absorption of public deposits, fund-raising fraud, securities fraud, and other crimes from 2016 to

1. The court also found that Evergrande and Xu Jiayin had obtained control of financial institutions through bribery and illegally withdrew credit funds and insurance funds.

If we only follow the CCP's judicial narrative, the case seems to have formed a closed loop: Evergrande had problems, Xu Jiayin committed crimes, and the court sentenced him. However, what the international community should investigate is not just Xu Jiayin himself. Evergrande has long relied on domestic banks, local government land finance, pre-sale funds, and offshore US dollar debt financing; after the company's collapse, foreign creditors are still seeking payment channels through complex Hong Kong liquidation and Chinese domestic asset recovery procedures.

Therefore, Xu Jiayin's current value lies not only in being a convicted real estate tycoon but also in being a core informant who has mastered Evergrande's financing, financial institutions, local relationships, and domestic and foreign funding arrangements for many years. Whoever controls Xu Jiayin first controls the most critical testimony entrance of Evergrande.

If Xu Jiayin were in a US judicial environment where he could be questioned and negotiated, US judicial personnel might continue to investigate not only whether Evergrande had committed fraud but also the true purpose of offshore financing, fund transfer routes, which foreign creditors were defrauded, which banks and political relationships supported high-leverage expansion, and whether there were undisclosed interests of the powerful. These questions have not been answered due to the Chinese court's sentence of Xu Jiayin to life imprisonment.

The Chen Zhi case provides an important contrast.

The US Department of Justice's indictment in 2025 accused Chen Zhi of leading the Prince Group in operating forced labor scam compounds and engaging in cryptocurrency investment fraud, stealing billions of dollars from US and global victims. The Department of Justice also proposed one of the largest bitcoin seizures in US history, involving approximately 127,271 bitcoins worth around $1.5 billion at the time. According to the Department of Justice, Chen Zhi is still a formally indicted defendant, and the indictment does not equal a court's final conviction.

In June 2026, the US Department of the Treasury expanded its actions against the Prince Group, imposing sanctions on nine individuals and 26 related entities, and stating that the Southeast Asian scam center stole billions of dollars from US victims every year. The Treasury Department also focused on the funding laundering infrastructure, front companies, real estate, and virtual currency channels, indicating that the US investigation's target is no longer just Chen Zhi but the entire network that supports the scam's funding operations.

This is the most comparable aspect of the Chen Zhi case to the CCP's internal cases. The US judicial system can expand the investigation scope after controlling a core defendant through plea agreements, seizures, bank subpoenas, digital asset tracking, and cooperative witness systems. The true investigation value lies not in "catching a bad person" but in using this person to uncover the network.

If Chen Zhi were to cooperate fully with the US judicial authorities, he could provide not only the internal operations of the scam compounds but also who provided banking and payment services, who controlled the companies, which political relationships helped the group survive, and which assets and beneficiaries ultimately received the funds. In other words, for anyone related to the cross-border scam interest network, the greatest danger is not Chen Zhi's indictment but his potential cooperation.

The Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli case pushes the problem to the national strategic level.

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On August 28, the two were formally removed from the Central Military Commission. Public reports show that after their exit, the original seven-member Central Military Commission was left with only two active members, Xi Jinping and Zhang Shengmin. Zhang Youxia had long served as the vice chairman of the Central Military Commission and was one of the most important military figures under Xi Jinping.

The CCP can package this type of case as "serious violations of discipline and law" and "eliminating corruption," but for the US and other countries, the truly valuable information is not how much money a general received but the decision-making chain of the Chinese military's external military actions, military-civilian dual-use technology, and weapons supply networks over the past few years.

This problem is no longer abstract. The US government has long accused Chinese entities of supplying Russia's military-industrial system with microelectronics, CNC machine tools, and other military-civilian dual-use items that can fill critical gaps in weapon production. The US Department of State's sanctions documents explicitly state that Chinese entities are an important source of these critical materials for Russia, including those related to unmanned aerial vehicles, glide bombs, and weapon production.

The Iranian side also has increasing public evidence. In June, the US Department of the Treasury sanctioned Chinese and Hong Kong individuals and companies for helping the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Iranian Ministry of Defense procure weapon-related materials; in July, it took action against Chinese entities that provided commercial support to Iran's Mahan Air. Reuters reported in July that Iran was planning to acquire hundreds of Chinese-made portable air defense missile systems, which Beijing denied.

These materials can prove that the US government has already viewed some Chinese and Hong Kong entities as supporters of Russia's and Iran's military-industrial and procurement networks;

but this precisely shows that the true direction of investigation should be the "command chain," not stopping at the CCP's narrative of "personal violations." Under the condition of Xi Jinping's repeated emphasis on the chairman responsibility system of the Central Military Commission, who ultimately decides the major strategic military relationships with countries like Russia and Iran? What roles do the vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, the joint staff system, and military-industrial enterprises play? Which decisions can be made by generals themselves, and which must go through Xi Jinping?

If Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli possess decision-making information at these levels, Beijing's thorough control over them also means that external investigation agencies will almost impossible to directly obtain their testimony and related military materials.

The US pressure on Beijing is shifting from peripheral entities to financial and strategic networks.

The US Department of the Treasury launched a new round of "economic isolation" actions against Iran this year, recently warning third-country governments, financial institutions, and companies that if they continue to help Iran obtain funding and trade support, they may face more severe secondary sanctions. The latest measures have largely involved Chinese, Hong Kong, and UAE trade and financial nodes.

Meanwhile, Trump publicly stated that Xi Jinping plans to visit the US on September 24, and the two sides are preparing the agenda for the summit. Reuters reported that the US has avoided directly hitting large Chinese financial institutions in its recent sanctions against Iran, partly because Washington does not want to completely destroy the negotiating space before Trump meets Xi Jinping.

This creates a common background for the three cases of Zhang Youxia, Xu Jiayin, and Chen Zhi in different fields: the US is increasingly relying on judicial, sanctions, asset seizures, and the dollar system to investigate cross-border funds and strategic networks, while Xi Jinping's regime has a strong motivation to ensure that the most sensitive individuals, funds, and documents are first under its control.

This does not mean that every Chinese internal trial is intended to block the US, nor can a purge and US investigation be directly linked without evidence. However, if the CCP's so-called "accountability" only handles public figures and does not allow independent judiciary to continue investigating the complete funding chain, military command chain, and political beneficiary chain, then this internal handling can be seen as a responsibility isolation mechanism for investigation.

The real question is: what would these people tell prosecutors if they were in the US?

From this perspective, the meaning of "arrest," "trial," and "purge" changes.

Xu Jiayin's life sentence does not mean that all of Evergrande's international funding problems have been investigated; the value of Chen Zhi's US indictment lies not in catching a scammer but in the US continuing to uncover his organization, wallet, bank, and front companies; Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli's purge cannot automatically answer who decides China's strategic military support for countries like Russia and Iran.

Therefore, the US and other independent judicial systems should investigate the "upstream problems" of these cases: who authorized, who protected, who financed, who ultimately benefited, and who can stop the investigation from continuing upward.

Xi Jinping has highly concentrated the highest power of the CCP, party, government, military, and national security systems. Since the military must obey the chairman responsibility system of the Central Military Commission, and major foreign affairs and national strategies emphasize the centralized and unified leadership of the party central committee, political responsibility cannot always stop at a few businessmen, generals, and peripheral companies once major external actions cause international legal and security consequences.

As for whether Xi Jinping's family and other CCP powerful families directly participated in Evergrande, Chen Zhi, or specific military supply networks, this must be proven case by case through company registrations, bank records, offshore documents, judicial materials, and reliable witnesses. However, this does not prevent us from asking a more fundamental question: why can the CCP always decide where responsibility investigations end, while the highest power itself almost never enters independent investigation procedures?