Screenshot: Former CCP Politburo Standing Committee member and Secretary of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission Zhou Yongkang on trial.
[People News] Editor’s Note: Since the CCP launched its persecution of Falun Gong on July 20, 1999, in order to force practitioners to renounce their belief in “Truthfulness, Compassion, Forbearance,” countless Falun Gong practitioners have been persecuted to death, forming a CCP “Blood-Debt Faction” headed by Jiang Zemin and Zeng Qinghong. For 26 years, many key members of this “Blood-Debt Faction” have suffered various forms of karmic retribution, and some are currently destroying their own futures. Beginning October 2, 2025, we have been publishing a series of typical cases of key “Blood-Debt Faction” members who have suffered retribution or have ruined themselves, as a warning to others.
Zhou Yongkang was one of the most important accomplices of the Jiang-Zeng “Blood-Debt Faction.”
I. Zhou Yongkang Sentenced to Life Imprisonment
On June 11, 2015, the 73-year-old Zhou Yongkang—his hair fully white and looking exhausted—was escorted into the courtroom.
That day, Zhou was charged with bribery, abuse of power, and intentional disclosure of state secrets. The Tianjin No. 1 Intermediate People’s Court sentenced him to life imprisonment, deprived him of political rights for life, and confiscated all his personal property.
The court found that while serving as vice-general manager of China National Petroleum Corporation, CCP Sichuan Provincial Party Secretary, CCP Politburo member, Minister of Public Security, State Councilor, and Politburo Standing Committee member and Secretary of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission, Zhou accepted 130 million yuan (RMB) in bribes, caused 14.86 billion yuan in losses through abuse of power, and intentionally leaked state secrets under extremely serious circumstances.
Zhou was vice-general manager of CNPC from 1988 to 1996, and a Politburo Standing Committee member and head of the Political and Legal Affairs Commission from 2007 to 2012. Assuming his corruption began in 1996 and continued until 2012, it spans 16 years.
But the verdict recognized only five people as his bribery sources. Could Zhou, over 16 years, have taken bribes from only five individuals? Anyone with even slight knowledge of the CCP officialdom would not believe this. The real number of people who bribed Zhou must be far higher, and the actual amount must far exceed 130 million yuan.
II. Zhou Yongkang’s Family Shattered
After Zhou’s arrest, his second wife—former CCTV host Jia Xiaoye, 28 years younger than him—was also arrested and sentenced to nine years in prison and fined 1 million yuan. She has divorced Zhou.
Zhou’s elder son Zhou Bin was sentenced to 18 years and fined 350 million yuan. Zhou’s daughter-in-law, U.S. citizen Huang Wan, received a two-and-a-half-year sentence with a three-year probation. When her probation ended on June 6, 2019, she was barred from leaving China. On December 24, 2020, she wrote to Xi Jinping asking to return to her home in the United States, but there has been no public reporting on whether she was permitted to leave.
Zhou’s second brother Zhou Yuanxing was investigated for “unexplained large assets of non-state personnel,” had his home raided, and later died of illness.
His third brother Zhou Yuanqing, third sister-in-law Zhou Lingying, and nephew Zhou Feng were taken for investigation in December 2013. Zhou Feng was sentenced to 12 years and fined 59 million yuan.
III. The Most Powerful Public Security Minister
From 2002 to 2007, Zhou Yongkang was promoted by Jiang and Zeng to serve as Politburo member, Secretariat member, State Councilor, and Minister of Public Security. He also served concurrently as First Political Commissar of the Armed Police and Deputy Secretary of the Political and Legal Affairs Commission.
From the 1978 Third Plenum to the 2002 16th Party Congress, six people served as Minister of Public Security: Zhao Cangbi, Liu Fuzhi, Ruan Chongwu, Wang Fang, Tao Siju, and Jia Chunwang. All were Central Committee members; none were Politburo members or Secretariat members.
Zhou Yongkang was the highest-ranking, most powerful, and most prominent Minister of Public Security since 1978.
IV. The Most Powerful Secretary of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission
From 2007 to 2012, Zhou was again promoted by Jiang and Zeng to Politburo Standing Committee member and head of the Central Political and Legal Affairs Commission.
In 2011, Forbes listed Zhou among the “World’s Most Powerful People,” ranking him as one of the most influential leaders other than then-CCP General Secretary Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao.
On January 29, 2012, Britain’s Daily Mail named Zhou among China’s top ten “black-collar figures.”
Zhou was the highest-ranking, most powerful, and most notorious head of the Political and Legal Affairs Commission since its establishment in 1980.
V. Involved in Two Coup Plots
While head of the Political and Legal Affairs Commission, Zhou was involved in two coup conspiracies: the “Bo-Zhou Coup” and the “Ling-Zhou Coup.”
On February 6, 2012, Wang Lijun, former Chongqing police chief, defected to the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu and revealed to U.S. officials that Zhou had conspired with Politburo member and Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai. Bo was to take Zhou’s place as Politburo Standing Committee member and head of the Political and Legal Affairs Commission at the 18th Party Congress, and later overthrow Xi Jinping through a coup, installing Bo as supreme leader. This was the “Bo-Zhou Coup.”
From Feb. 13 to 17, 2012, during Xi Jinping’s visit to the U.S. as Vice President, The Washington Free Beacon publicly exposed the “Bo-Zhou Coup.”
On May 26, 2017, Liu Yanping, then discipline chief of the Ministry of State Security, told “Red Notice fugitive” Guo Wengui in New York that Zhou had also conspired with Ling Jihua, then director of the General Office of the CCP. Ling would support Zhou remaining on the Politburo Standing Committee at the 18th Party Congress and becoming NPC chairman the following year, while Zhou would help Ling enter the Standing Committee, and eventually replace Xi as supreme leader. This was the “Ling-Zhou Coup.”
VI. Reports and Fall from Power
On July 11, 2008, on the eve of the Beijing Olympics, I (the author) was detained on Zhou’s orders for speaking the truth about Falun Gong.
On November 19, 2008, while held in Beijing No. 1 Detention Center, I wrote a report to then-Central Military Commission Chairman Hu Jintao, titled Recommendation to Legally Arrest Zhou Yongkang. At the end, I demanded:
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Zhou Yongkang be arrested according to law;
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Zhou compensate me no less than 10 million yuan for material and emotional damages.
The letter was submitted to Officer Jie Guojian (phonetic), who then handed it to Beijing Public Security pretrial officer Dou Zheng (phonetic).
On February 6, 2013, renowned rights lawyer Pu Zhiqiang posted on Sina, Tencent, and Sohu Weibo, reporting Zhou by name for “bringing calamity to the nation.” Pu wrote:
“I believe that if China is to emerge from the shadow of stability-maintenance, we must settle accounts with his (Zhou’s) model of social-security comprehensive management. Too many human tragedies are directly or indirectly linked to him. He governed for ten years, poisoning the whole nation—truly a thief of the people!”
Since the CCP’s “criminal immunity for Standing Committee members” had long been a tacit rule, Zhou felt protected by his Standing Committee position and by Jiang and Zeng. But having done so many evil things, he was guilty and feared eventual reckoning.
Zhou’s two coup conspiracies before his retirement were directly tied to his fear of being purged. He hoped to elevate “his own people” to protect himself and his family.
But man proposes, Heaven disposes.
On July 29, 2015, Xinhua announced that Zhou was under investigation.
VII. Zhou Yongkang’s Blood Debts
From December 1999 to December 2002, as Sichuan Party Secretary, Zhou zealously persecuted Falun Gong under Jiang and Zeng’s orders, making Sichuan one of the worst provinces in the persecution. In Chengdu, Suining, and Panzhihua alone, 75 Falun Gong practitioners were persecuted to death.
According to incomplete Minghui statistics, during Zhou’s time as Public Security Minister (2002–2007), at least 1,824 practitioners were persecuted to death nationwide. During his time as head of the Political and Legal Affairs Commission (2007–2012), at least 666 practitioners were persecuted to death.
The most brutal period was around the 2008 Beijing Olympics. From January to July 2008 alone, 586 practitioners were illegally arrested in Beijing and more than 8,037 nationwide.
On the night of January 26, 2008, Beijing practitioner Yu Zhou was stopped by police while driving home. Police found a few Shen Yun DVDs and arrested him and his wife Xu Na, detaining them in Tongzhou Detention Center.
Eleven days later, on February 6—Chinese New Year’s Eve—Yu Zhou was persecuted to death at age 42.
From 2002 to 2012, Zhou bore ultimate leadership responsibility for the deaths of Falun Gong practitioners at the hands of police and political-legal agencies.
VIII. Suspected Organ Harvesting of Falun Gong Practitioners
In February 2004, Han Junqing of Doudian Village, Fangshan District, Beijing, was arrested for practicing Falun Gong and died from persecution on May 4.
His daughter, Han Yu—now living in New York—recalled seeing her father’s body: once a tall and strong man, now extremely thin, with many facial injuries, missing tissue under his left eye, and bruised purple skin.
Her father’s throat had a thick black suture extending downward under his clothing. When Han Yu tried to undo more buttons to inspect, police forced her out. But her aunt and uncle opened the clothing themselves: they found a long incision from throat to abdomen, stitched with black thread, and the cavity was filled with ice.
While moving the body, they found his left arm had been broken.
In 2007, Han Yu read online reports about organ harvesting and immediately connected it with her father: “All signs showed my father may have had his organs harvested.” She cried whenever she recalled her father’s death.
Since the exposure of the CCP’s organ-harvesting atrocities in 2006, numerous experts, scholars, doctors, lawyers, journalists, and organizations such as the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong have conducted 19 years of independent investigations. Their conclusions:
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Large-scale organ harvesting from Falun Gong practitioners is a fact.
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It was ordered by Jiang Zemin and carried out by the Political-Legal Affairs Commission, 610 Office, police, courts, prisons, hospitals, armed police, and military.
A February 22, 2006 PhoenixNet article by reporter Chen Yanhui reported that tens of thousands of foreigners came to China for organ transplants, making China the world’s transplant center.
Patients came first from Korea, followed by Japan, India, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, Oman, the U.S., Canada, Israel, Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan.
Where did these organs come from? The CCP claimed they came from “executed prisoners.”
On March 15, 2015, Vice Minister of Health Huang Jiefu said on Phoenix TV:
“It is very clear—Zhou Yongkang was a big tiger, the head of the Political and Legal Affairs Commission, a former Politburo Standing Committee member… So where did those executed-prisoner organs come from? Isn’t it clear?”
Huang said that “executed-prisoner organ harvesting” involved a filthy profit chain, full of secrets, extremely sensitive and complicated.
But according to Ouyang Fei’s article ‘Executed Prisoners’ Cannot Account for China’s Explosive Organ Transplant Market, the number of executed prisoners was far below the number of transplants performed (12,000–20,000 annually from 2003–2006). This suggests that many organs did not come from executed prisoners but were likely taken from Falun Gong practitioners under the label of “executed prisoners.”
This explains why Huang called it a “sensitive, complicated forbidden zone.”
From 2002 to 2012, during Zhou’s tenure as Minister of Public Security and head of the Political-Legal Affairs Commission, he was the primary figure responsible for the political-legal system’s involvement in organ harvesting.
Conclusion
When Zhou was Politburo Standing Committee member and head of the Political-Legal Affairs Commission, he was called the “Security Czar.” The political-legal system—from the Commission down to the 610 Office and all police, prosecutors, courts, and justice bureaus—not only feared him but scrambled to appease him.
At that time, he wielded immense power and never imagined he would one day be dragged into court.
But the law of karmic retribution governs all. “One sees him build a mansion; one sees him feast guests; one sees his mansion collapse.” Such dramas have played out endlessly throughout history.
No matter how rampant Zhou Yongkang once was, when retribution comes, no one can stop it.
(The Dajiyuan)
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