Zhou Yongkang case

The Zhou Yongkang case refers to a case involving Zhou Yongkang, former member of the Politburo Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and Secretary of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, who retired in 2012.

Zhou was investigated by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) internally starting in 2013, and expelled from the CCP after the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection announced the filing of a case for investigation in 2014. The case involved Zhou Yongkang's serious violation of discipline, and subsequently, after being investigated and arrested by the Supreme People's Procuratorate, he was transferred to the First Branch of the Tianjin Municipal People's Procuratorate in 2015 and prosecuted by the Tianjin First Intermediate People's Court, being sentenced to life imprisonment. The case involved Zhou's bribery, abuse of power, and intentional disclosure of state secrets. The "Zhou Yongkang case" in a broader sense also includes a series of criminal cases involving his relatives, related businessmen, and many officials from his faction, including Zhou Yongkang's son Zhou Bin, Sichuan businessman Liu Han, and Zhou Yongkang's secretary Ji Wenlin.

The scope of the Zhou Yongkang case and its series of cases covered many fields such as politics, economy, and culture, spanned decades, and covered the regions of Northeast China, Southwestern China, East China, and Beijing and the central government. The officials involved almost encompassed the entire cadre system of the CCP, from county-level, department-level, provincial-level to national-level. Zhou was the first member of the Politburo Standing Committee to be investigated for corruption and expelled from the CCP since the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. He was also the highest-ranking official to be investigated. Zhou Yongkang's downfall was seen by outsiders as breaking the unspoken political rule of "no punishment for Standing Committee members" that had been rumored in the public since the Deng Xiaoping era. Zhou Yongkang was imprisoned in Qincheng Prison, where he was said to have a vegetable garden to grow vegetables to pass the time.