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Liaoning Governor Xu Kunlin greets military officers stationed in the province ahead of the Chinese New Year holiday on 14 February. | Image: Liaoning Daily Wechat public account.

The new Party head in Liaoning, Xu Kunlin (许昆林), is wasting little time in continuing and expanding President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption drive in the province. Liaoning has announced a number of investigations and convictions against senior officials, resulting in a series of high-profile cases and senior meetings. Following on from news on the fight against corruption in the Customs department of Liaoning, data suggests that the impacts of personnel shifts in the provincial centre of Shenyang are cascading out to the border areas with North Korea.

Within weeks of Xu’s appointment in September, the Liaoning Provincial Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervision announced an investigation into the Vice Mayor of Dalian Li Damin (李大民). Li was accused of accepting bribes from project fund managers, was swiftly expelled from the Party in December, and is awaiting prosecution. Li’s wrongdoing allegedly dated back all the way to 2009.

Li’s prosecution notice was paired with the expulsion of He Dapeng (赫大鹏), former deputy secretary of Xinmin, a district of Shenyang, who was cited for “accepting gifts and money”. However, it was He’s more recent role as Secretary of the Political and Legal Affairs Commission of Shenyang, and his engagement with business contracts, that may be worth noting. He was sentenced to six years in prison for bribery, according to a notice by the Liaoning Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervision last month.

Liaoning has also seen progress on additional lower-level corruption cases. Given that these cases pre-date the appointment of Xu as provincial Party head, they indicate the limits of seeing all anti-corruption activity as a product of personalist politics. Qi Xiangguo (祁向国), former deputy director of the Liaoning Provincial Department of Housing, faced an investigation into bribery and abuse of his position at the start of 2025, and was expelled from the CCP in December, pending trial. Tan Jun (谭军), former deputy captain of the Fourth Squadron of the Comprehensive Administrative Law Enforcement Team of Transportation in the industrial city of Kaiyuan, Tieling, was sentenced to 18 months in prison for bribery in August. He was found to have accepted “road maintenance fees” from freight truck owners.

Li Damin’s case marks the most senior official to have faced corruption charges in Liaoning since the provincial vice governor, Hao Chunrong (郝春荣), was sentenced to 12 years in prison for bribery in May, 2023. That Xu has taken down such a high-ranking official so early in his tenure indicates the new Liaoning Party chief intends to make his mark fighting corruption in the province, thereby placating his ultimate bosses in Beijing.

Xu has in recent weeks taken further steps which appear designed to keep the top leadership content. Following the recent publication of Xi Jinping’s latest theoretical article on management of the financial sector, with frequent references to the fight against anti-corruption, Xu immediately organised a study meeting on the text. Entitled “Following a Well-Grounded Path of Financial Development with Chinese Characteristics and Building a Financial Powerhouse” (走好中国特色金融发展之路，建设金融强国), the article references speeches previously made by Xi in 2023 and 2024, with the following key slogans fitting into the Party’s anti-corruption lexicon:

• Many problems in the financial system stem from… the Party’s weak political building and insufficient efforts in promoting Party conduct and integrity (金融系统出现的许多问题，根源就在于…党的政治建设薄弱，党风廉政建设抓得不紧).

• We must uphold the centralised and unified leadership of the Party Central Committee over financial work… to ensure that financial work always moves in the right direction (必须坚持党中央对金融工作的集中统一领导…确保金融工作始终沿着正确方向前进).

After Xi’s article appeared in Qiushi (求是), the official theoretical magazine of the CCP, on 1 February, Xu’s provincial administration held its own study session on the article twelve days later. Taking a comparative lens, we note that only three provinces – Zhejiang, Hubei and Henan – reported studying Xi’s new text sooner, indicating Xu’s desire to prioritise Xi and his anti-corruption drive as the new governor looks to make his mark in Liaoning. A report from the meeting in Shenyang promised, of course, to “resolutely advance anti-corruption efforts in Liaoning,” and included a speech by Xu to the rest of the Standing Committee of the Provincial Party.

This follows a series of recent meetings and work reports led by Xu which have focused on corruption ahead of the Chinese New Year holiday. On 10 February, the provincial administration held its latest meeting on anti-corruption work led by Xu’s deputy, Liaoning’s Vice Governor Wang Xinwei (王新伟). The meeting was designed to follow the State Council’s Fourth State Council Meeting on Anti-Corruption led by Chinese Premier Li Qiang in Beijing two weeks earlier.

The same week, Xu led a video conference meeting of his provincial government on the rule of law, including members of the Provincial Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervision. The Liaoning administration promised to “deepen the centralized rectification of misconduct and corruption problems affecting the people, so as to gain the trust of the people with more tangible and accessible results”.

These sessions follow the publication of the Liaoning provincial government’s work report in late January, which again devoted significant attention to the anti-corruption drive, stating:

We will further promote the simultaneous investigation and treatment of misconduct and corruption, without stopping or backing down, establishing explicit rules and breaking implicit rules, and comprehensively advancing the concentrated rectification of misconduct and corruption problems affecting the people. We will systematically address corruption in key areas such as state-owned enterprises, housing and construction, fisheries, finance, development zones, and bidding and tendering, resolutely eradicating the soil and conditions for corruption to breed, ensuring that a clean and honest atmosphere surrounds the people and that righteousness fills the land of Liaoning.

Less than six months into his tenure, Xu begins the Year of the Horse having already established firm anti-corruption credentials in Liaoning, and with further prosecutions in the cases of former Dalian Vice Mayor Li Damin and housing official Qi Xiangguo due to be concluded imminently.