First control the people, then control the evidence?From Zhizhuin, Chen Zhi to Zhang Zhang see the "responsibility isolation" of the Xi Jinping regime.

On August 20, a court in Shenzhen sentenced Zhang Zhang and Liu Zheng to life imprisonment; on August 28, Liu Zheng was officially removed from the National Central Military Commission. Meanwhile, U.S. justice and finance departments are still expanding their pursuit of Prince Chen and his multinational fraud and money laundering networks. Three cases spanning real estate, cross-border financial crimes and the army’s top ranks seem to have little to do with, but a common question arises between them when observed as a starting point from “who holds the key figures, who controls the evidence, who decides where the chain of responsibility goes.”

It can mean detention, trial or political cleansing, but in Xi’s highly concentrated political system, it also means that the person’s testimony, cases, disposal of assets, lawyer contact and the possibility of cooperation with foreign judicial organs all fall first into the control of the CCP. So what really needs to be investigated is not only “what this person has done”, but another more sensitive question: if this person is not first controlled by Beijing, but entered the United States or other independent judicial system, what money flow, political relations and the highest decision chain could he convey?

The key to the case is not only life imprisonment, but who controlled the last book of Hengda.

China's Supreme People's Court on August 20 issued a ruling stating that the company was sentenced to life imprisonment and confiscated all personal property.The court found that the company, the company and the company carried out ongoing, large-scale financial fraud between 2016 and 2021, and involved the illegal absorption of public deposits, fundraising fraud, fraudulent issuance of securities, irregular disclosure of important information and other crimes.The court also specially determined that the company and the company acquired control of financial institutions through bribery and illegally obtained credit and insurance funds.

If only according to the Chinese judicial narrative, the case appears to have formed a closed circle: there has been a big problem, and the house imprint crime, so the court heavily judged. But the house imprint really deserves to be tracked by the international community, and it has never been just the house imprint itself. Long-term dependence on domestic banks, local government land finance, pre-sales funds and offshore dollar debt financing; after the collapse of the company, foreign creditors are still looking for payment channels in the complex Hong Kong disbursement and China's domestic asset recovery procedures. Reuters previously that Hong Kong's offshore creditors can recover funds, largely depends on whether they can prove domestic subsidiaries to the parent company, and the Hong Kong court's dis

Therefore, the most important value is not necessarily just a sentenced real estate giant, but a core knowledgeable person in the years of financing, financial institutions, local relations and financing arrangements at home and abroad. Whoever controls the sign, whoever first controls the core of the testimony entrance.

If the U.S. prosecutors could question and negotiate in a judicial environment, the U.S. prosecutors may continue to question whether or not offshore financing is actually used, which overseas creditors are fraudulent, which banks and political relations support high leverage expansion, and whether there are unrevealed interest arrangements.

Therefore, Focus China believes that the judgment of the case can not only look at "how many years sentenced", but should look at whether the judicial process of the CCP has really opened a complete chain of funding and political responsibility.If the first-trial judgment ultimately locked only the responsibility of the huge financial real estate system in the executives of the CCP and Hengda, and does not allow the outside world to independently inspect the upstream banking, regulatory and political interests, then the so-called judicial accountability has an objective effect at the same time: to leave the most critical knowledge and evidence within the scope of the CCP's own judicial control.

Chen’s case shows exactly the difference in the way U.S. judiciary pursues it.

The Prince Group Chen case provides an important contrast.

The prosecution filed by the U.S. Department of Justice in 2025 accused Mr. Chen of leading the Prince Group’s forced labor fraud park, implementing so-called “killing pigs” cryptocurrency investment fraud, stealing billions of dollars from the U.S. and global victims. The Department of Justice also proposed one of the largest Bitcoin confiscation operations in the U.S. history, involving about 127,271 Bitcoins, worth about $15 billion at the time. According to the Department of Justice documents, Mr. Chen is still the official accused, and the prosecution is not equivalent to the court’s final conviction.

In June 2026, the U.S. Treasury continued to expand its operations against the Prince Group, imposing sanctions on nine individuals and 26 associated entities, and said the Southeast Asian Scam Center stole billions of dollars annually from U.S. victims. The Treasury also shifted its focus to fund cleaning infrastructure, front-end companies, real estate and virtual currency channels, indicating that the U.S. is now targeting not only Chen’s individuals, but the entire network that supports the operation of fraudulent funds.

This is where Chen’s case is most worthy of comparison with the case inside the Chinese Communist Party.U.S. justice system can continue to expand the scope of the investigation through confession agreements, confiscation, bank referrals, digital asset tracking and the cooperative witness system.The real value of the investigation is not to “catch a bad person”, but to borrow the person up and out of the network.

If a person like Chen Zhi entered a process of cooperation that the U.S. judiciary can fully control, he could provide not only the fraud park’s internal operations, but also who provides banking and payment services, who controls the company, what political relationships help the group survive, what assets the funds eventually enter and in the name of beneficiaries.In other words, the most dangerous thing for anyone associated with cross-border fraud networks is not Chen Zhi being prosecuted, but Chen Zhi to start collaborating.

That’s why how China’s future dealing with similar key figures cannot simply be understood as “Beijing is also fighting fraud.”

The question is not "how much corrupt", but who controls the Chinese military's real command chain.

In the case of Zhang Yuan and Liu Zhengli, the issue was pushed to the national strategic level.

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On August 28, the two were officially removed from the Central Military Commission of the country. Public reports showed that after the two withdrew, the original seven members of the Central Military Commission remained only two active members of Xi Jinping and Zhang Zemin.

The Communist Party can package such cases as “serious violations of discipline” and “cleansing corruption”, but for the United States and other countries, what really has a strategic value is not to know how much money a general has received, but how the Chinese military has decided over the past few years on foreign military, civilian dual-use technology and weapons supply networks.

The U.S. government has long accused Chinese entities of supplying Russian military-industrial systems with microelectronics, numerical control tools and other civilian dual-use items that can fill key gaps in weapons production. The U.S. State Department sanctions documents clearly state that Chinese entities are a major source of Russian access to such critical materials, including supply chains related to drones, flying bombs and weapons production.

The U.S. Treasury sanctioned individuals and in China and Hong Kong in June this year for helping the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and the Iranian Ministry of Defense to purchase weapons-related supplies, and took action in July against entities in China that provide commercial support to Iranian Mahan Airways. Reuters also in July that Iran was allegedly planning to acquire hundreds of Chinese-made portable air defense missile systems, and Beijing denied providing weapons to Iran.

These materials prove that the U.S. government has viewed some Chinese and Hong Kong entities as supporters of Russian, Iranian military and procurement networks.

But this is precisely indicating that the direction that really deserves to be pursued should be the “order chain”, rather than staying in the “personal discipline” narrative given by the Communist Party of China.With Xi Jinping repeatedly emphasizing the responsibility system of the chairman of the Military Commission, the major strategic military relations involving Russia, Iran and other countries are exactly by whom?

If Zhang Yat-Man and Liu Zhi-Li possess information on military decision-making at these levels, then Beijing puts them completely under internal control, which objectively means that it is almost impossible for external investigative agencies to directly obtain their testimony and relevant military material.

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

The current international environment makes this issue more sensitive.

U.S. Treasury has launched a new round of “economic isolation” operations against Iran this year and has clearly warned third-party governments, financial institutions and that if they continue to help Iran get funding and trade support, they could face harsher secondary sanctions.

Meanwhile, Trump openly said that Xi planned to visit the U.S. on September 24 and that both sides were preparing the agenda for the summit. Reuters that the U.S. had temporarily avoided direct strikes on major Chinese financial institutions in recent sanctions against Iran, one of the reasons discussed was Washington’s reluctance to completely destroy the negotiating space before Trump and Xi met.

This gives rise to a more observable common background in the cases of Zhang Yat-Man, Xi Jinping, and Chen Zhi in three different areas: The United States is increasingly relying on justice, sanctions, asset confiscation and the dollar system to track multinational funds and strategic networks, while the Xi Jinping regime has a strong motivation to ensure that the most sensitive people, funds and documents are first under its control.

This is not to say that every Chinese internal trial is to block the United States, nor can a certain clearance and U.S. investigation be hard-written as a causal relationship without direct evidence. but if the CCP’s so-called “accountability” always deals only with public figures, but does not allow independent justice to continue to track the entire chain of funds, military command chains and political benefit chains, then this internal disposal is worth looking at as a responsibility isolation mechanism to investigate.

What really needs to be asked is what they can tell the prosecutors if these people come to the United States.

From this perspective, the meaning of “catching” and “judging” and “cleaning” has changed.

The sentence is not the same as Hengda's all international financial problems have been cleared; the value of Chen's prosecution by the United States is not that the United States has caught a scam head, but that the United States is following his organization, wallet, banks and front-end companies to continue to dismantle the network; Zhang Yongman, Liu Zhi Liu have been cleaned up, nor can it automatically answer to the Chinese military and civilian support of strategic partners such as Russia, Iran and others by who to decide exactly.

Therefore, Focus on China believes that what the U.S. and other independent judicial systems really need to track in the future should be the “upstream questions” of these cases: who authorizes, who protects, who funds, who ultimately profits, and who can prevent the investigation from going up.

Xi Jinping has concentrated the supreme power of the Party, politics, the military and the national security system highly on himself.Since the military must obey the responsibility system of the President of the Military Commission, the major foreign and national strategy and emphasize the centralized unified leadership of the Party Central Committee, then once major foreign actions have caused international law and security consequences, the political responsibility cannot forever remain on a few businessmen, generals and peripheral companies.

As for whether the Xi Jinping family and other CCP aristocratic families are directly involved in the Yongda, Chen Zhi or specific military supply networks, at this stage we must rely on company registration, bank records, offshore documents, judicial materials and reliable witness-by-case proofs. But this does not prevent us from asking a more fundamental question: why can the CCP always decide where responsibility goes, while the supreme power itself rarely enters independent investigation procedures?