The second episode of the thought-provoking documentary series "Sustained Effort, Deepening Progress" titled "Political Oversight and Assurance" aired on January 7 this year, and it exposed a series of issues that occurred during Li Zaiyong's tenure as the Secretary of the Liupanshui Municipal Committee. The program detailed how Li Zaiyong blindly incurred debts to build vanity projects and performance-driven constructions in order to craft an image for himself.

Following the prosecution of Sun Zhigang, the former Secretary of the Guizhou Provincial Committee, there has been new progress in the case of Li Zaiyong. After waiting for three and a half months, 61-year-old Li Zaiyong finally faced the first trial for his bribery and abuse of power case. During the trial on May 23, CCTV news reported that Li Zaiyong was suspected of having accepted bribes totaling over 432 million yuan over 25 years. In addition, the projects he was involved in had accumulated up to more than 914 million yuan in project financing interest and other fees. The environmental damage was equally shocking, as Li Zaiyong's actions led to the illegal occupation of over 105 hectares of land, including forest, farmland, and permanent basic agricultural land, causing an economic loss of over 86.45 million yuan to the ecological environment. At the end of the trial, Li Zaiyong publicly expressed his guilt and remorse.

This case was heard by the Chongqing Fifth Intermediate People's Court, with the Chongqing People's Procuratorate Fifth Branch as the prosecutor. Li Zaiyong was accused of using his authority and position in various posts to help others in project contracting, land requisition, and project planning approval, thereby obtaining illegal profits. Moreover, from 2014 to 2017, he violated laws and regulations, ignored the objections of experts, and forcefully developed tourism projects, resulting in significant financial losses and environmental degradation. The prosecution called for him to be held criminally responsible for the crimes of bribery and abuse of power.

During the trial, Li Zaiyong challenged the evidence presented by the prosecution one by one, with his defense attorneys responding. Both the prosecution and defense engaged in in-depth discussions under the guidance of the court, and ultimately, Li Zaiyong made his final statement, admitting to all charges.

It is noteworthy that according to data released by the Guizhou Provincial People's Government, Li Zaiyong's three-year tenure as the Secretary of the Liupanshui Municipal Committee saw the region's debt increase by more than 150 billion yuan.

In 1983, Li Zaiyong graduated from the Department of Agriculture at the Guizhou Agricultural College and began his career in Tongzi County, Guizhou Province. Initially, he served as a cadre in the Yuantian commune of Yuantian District in Tongzi County and, through unremitting efforts, rose to become the Secretary of the Tongzi County Committee by 1995. Afterwards, from January 1998, Li Zaiyong took on various roles on the political stage of Guizhou, successively serving as the Secretary of the Honghuagang District Committee in Zunyi City, a member of the Standing Committee and Vice Governor of Qiandongnan Prefecture, Deputy Secretary and Commissioner of the Tongren Prefectural Committee, as well as Deputy Secretary and Mayor of Guiyang City.

From March 2011 to November 2013, Li Zaiyong served as the Mayor of Guiyang City. In November 2013, he was appointed the Secretary of the Liupanshui Municipal Committee. Liupanshui City is known as the "Coal Capital of the South" with its raw coal, washed coal, and coke outputs ranking at the top of Guizhou Province. The added value of the coal industry accounted for a significant portion of the industrial added value in Liupanshui City.

But during his term, Li Zaiyong promoted massive infrastructure construction, including 23 tourism projects. Importantly, 16 of these projects were later identified by Guizhou Province as inefficient and idle — they appeared large and continuous from a distance, but up close they were sparsely visited. Some projects stalled operationally with frequent malfunctions, or even became unfinished abandoned constructions, overgrown with weeds.

To build these projects, Li Zaiyong disregarded the local fiscal capacity, blindly incurring debt, with the interest on the debt alone causing a huge loss of over 900 million yuan to the state. In the little over three years of his governance, Liupanshui city's debt increased by more than 150 billion yuan, with the debt growth rate surpassing 300% from 2013 to 2017, placing a heavy burden on the local economy.

Despite repeated emphasis from the central party authorities to strictly control new government debts and guard against the risks of hidden debts, prohibiting the financing of government projects through financing platforms, Li Zaiyong turned a blind eye and even established 6 new financing platform companies, using the financing amount as one of the indicators for cadre performance evaluation. Furthermore, some projects were packaged as corporate ventures, requiring companies to borrow; others were financed by district and county efforts. Under such misguided direction, some districts and counties did not hesitate to operate irregularly to fulfill their tasks.

Li Zaiyong once publicly stated, "If I had to repay the money I borrowed myself, I definitely wouldn't borrow, but since the government repays it, I borrowed. Anyway, after a few years when I change posts and leave with a pat on my back, it is my successors who come to bear the responsibilities, just like passing on the drumbeat."

This massive ineffective investment triggered a vicious chain effect, which included using new debts to repay old ones, robbing Peter to pay Paul, not being able to settle maturing project debts, long-term arrears in construction payments, and even misappropriation of funds meant for the resettlement of the masses, directly harming their vital interests. Li Zaiyong's distorted public policy behavior overdrawn the government's credibility and the public's trust.

In the end, Li Zaiyong returned to the provincial capital of Guiyang in 2017 where he assumed important positions including the member of the Standing Committee of the Guizhou Provincial Party Committee and Secretary of Guiyang Municipal Committee.

Li Zaiyong was appointed as a member of the Standing Committee of the Guizhou Provincial Party Committee, the Deputy Secretary of the Party Group of the Provincial Government, and Vice Governor of Guizhou Province in May 2018, and in January 2022, he took the position of Vice Chairman of the Guizhou Provincial Political Consultative Conference. However, not long after, he was investigated for serious violations of discipline and law. As of March 27, 2023, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the National Supervisory Commission announced that Li Zaiyong was under disciplinary review and supervisory investigation. Subsequently, on November 7, 2023, a bulletin was issued, announcing severe disciplinary actions against Li Zaiyong, including expulsion from the Party and public office, disqualification as a delegate to the 13th Party Congress of Guizhou Province, confiscation of his illicit gains, and his suspected criminal issues and involved assets were transferred to the judicial authorities for handling.

The bulletin detailed the serious disciplinary and legal violations committed by Li Zaiyong during his tenure: he lost his ideals and beliefs, betrayed his original mission, had a distorted view of achievements and a skewed perspective of power, failing to implement the new development concepts, instead indulging in the construction of "achievement projects" that increased debt burdensomely, posed huge debt risks, and caused serious damage to the local ecological environment. In addition, he resisted the organization's review deliberately, long engaged in superstitious activities; violated the spirit of the central government's eight-point regulations, accepted banquet and travel arrangements, seeking special treatment; hid personal matters during organizational inquiries, was dishonest in his responses, and sought personal benefits for others during cadre selection and appointment; accepted gifts and money, engaged in power and money transactions; neglected the interests of the masses, interfered with their autonomy in business operations; inappropriately influenced judicial and disciplinary enforcement activities; was morally corrupt, addicted to gambling; did not maintain the baseline of discipline and law in the exercise of power, put personal relations above public interest, engaged in transactions between power and money, used his office privileges for others in project contracting and project approval, illegally gained huge material benefits, and abused his powers, causing significant losses to public property, state and people's interests.