A Chinese court handed a suspended death sentence to a former senior provincial official on Monday, one day after state television broadcast details of his corruption. In November, Wang Fuyu, the former deputy Communist Party chief of Guizhou province, pleaded guilty to receiving 450 million yuan (US$70.7 million) in bribes. As well as the death sentence, suspended for two years after which it will be commuted to life in prison, Wang was fined 1 million yuan and had all his property confiscated. A statement from the court in Tianjin said Wang accepted the decision and would not appeal. His case featured in the second episode of an anti-corruption documentary shown on state broadcaster China Central Television on Sunday night, where he was shown confessing to wrongdoing and expressing remorse. Xinjiang: China to target ‘corrupt’ officials in state TV broadcast Wang, 69, was detained by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), the party’s top disciplinary watchdog, last February, two years after his retirement. The programme, co-produced by the CCDI, detailed how in 2014, Wang, who was then chairman of Guizhou’s people’s political consultative conference, helped to secure a contract for a businessman identified only as Shen. Gao Shuhong, the former deputy director of the Kweichow Moutai group which produces highly prized spirits, awarded Shen the contract. Wang did not attend the lunch, but called Gao to say that his brother Wang Fu, who was present, would “take good care of him”. Gao, who was sentenced to 10 years in jail for bribery in March 2020, told the documentary that he “immediately understood” what was being asked of him, and granted Shen a construction contract for a 2.2 billion yuan project to develop a resort on the southern island of Hainan. Wang Fuyu later arranged for his brother to become a partner in Shen’s company, pocketing 45 per cent of the profits from the project, totalling about 60 million yuan. Wang Fu has also been detained and placed under investigation. There was no word on what has happened to Shen. Kweichow Moutai is best-known for its Maotai baijiu, a fiery drink favoured by leading Communist revolutionaries such as Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai and has become a symbol of wealth and power for China’s modern political and business elites. The programme said Wang had used his power to secure a lucrative Maotai distribution deal for his son Wang Bin, while stockpiling large quantities of the spirit, which he sold for “huge profits”. China’s corruption busters signal they plan to make bribe givers pay The former official told the programme: “I don’t know why I wanted that money, I have enough already. What did I want the money for? To bury myself? I know now that my insane greed was at its peak.” The CCDI told the programme: “Wang Fuyu has seriously underestimated the Party Central’s determination and will in fighting corruption. His ministerial rank was not protection, and retirement did not mean that he was safe.” The episode, titled Hunting Tigers and Swatting Flies , highlighted Wang’s case as an example of the CCDI’s efforts to bring down the “tigers”, a term used to refer to corrupt senior officials. The episode also shed light on how the “flies”, lower- and middle-ranking cadres, are creaming off money intended for old age pensions or medical and housing subsidies for the poor. It featured the case of a grass-roots official responsible for approving payments in Yondeng, a rural county in Gansu province, who confessed to milking 550,000 yuan in bribes from 13 poor families, including one looking for funding for cancer treatment. The official Zhao Yonglian, who was jailed for 3½ years and fined 100,000 yuan in 2019, told the documentary she was now “too ashamed” of her actions. The five-episode anti corruption documentary is being shown ahead of the CCDI’s annual work conference to be held at the end of this month. Its first episode on Saturday featured confessions by former deputy public security minister Sun Lijun and Hu Huaibang, former chairman of China Development Bank .