Ex-Head of China's Drug Watchdog Sentenced to 14 Years — Second Regulator to Fall Since 2007 Execution

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A Court in Shandong Delivers the Verdict

A court in China's eastern Shandong province sentenced Bi Jingquan to 14 years in prison on Tuesday. Bi, 70, once led the China Food and Drug Administration, the agency responsible for approving medicines sold across the country.

The court found that Bi had accepted more than 57 million yuan (about $8.5 million) in bribes between 1995 and 2025. He took the money in exchange for helping people and companies with business deals, government approvals, and project matters.

Bi admitted guilt and expressed remorse during the trial, according to the court's statement. He had already been expelled from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in December 2025, when the country's top anti-corruption watchdog stripped him of his remaining official titles and handed his case to prosecutors.

A Reformer Who Fell From Grace

Bi took charge of the CFDA in early 2015. He arrived just months before Beijing launched a sweeping overhaul of how China reviews new drugs. Under his leadership, the agency worked to speed up approvals for new medicines and to raise quality standards for generic drugs — reforms that some in the pharmaceutical industry credited as genuinely important.

That reputation collapsed in 2018. A company called Changchun Changsheng Biotechnology was caught falsifying production records for a rabies vaccine and selling hundreds of thousands of substandard doses, many of them given to children. The scandal set off public fury across China.

Days after the scandal broke, China's ruling Politburo Standing Committee, led by President Xi Jinping, forced out several senior officials tied to drug and vaccine oversight. Bi, who by then had moved into an even more senior post overseeing market regulation, was among those pushed to resign.

Not the First Regulator to Fall

Bi's case echoes an earlier scandal that shocked China nearly two decades ago. In 2007, Zheng Xiaoyu — an earlier head of the same food and drug agency — was executed after being convicted of taking bribes to approve unsafe medicines, including an antibiotic linked to at least ten deaths.

That execution was meant to send a message that China would not tolerate corruption in drug safety. Yet the return of a second former agency chief to a courtroom, nearly twenty years later, raises uncomfortable questions about whether the underlying problem — a regulatory system answerable mainly to the Communist Party rather than to independent courts or a free press — was ever truly fixed.

Critics of China's one-party system argue that cases like Bi's follow a familiar pattern: officials rise through opaque internal Party channels, face little outside scrutiny while in power, and are only punished years later, often as part of broader political purges rather than transparent, independent oversight.

What Comes Next

Bi's prison sentence closes one chapter, but questions about accountability in China's drug-approval system remain open. The country's food and drug regulator has been restructured multiple times since Bi's tenure, most recently folded into the State Administration for Market Regulation.

For now, Chinese authorities are presenting the case as proof that their anti-corruption campaign continues to reach even former senior officials. Independent observers, however, note that without transparent courts and a free press, it remains difficult to know how many similar cases go undetected — or unpunished.

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Sources:

1. Reuters — "Former head of Chinese food and drug watchdog jailed for bribery," September 15, 2026: https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/former-head-chinese-food-drug-watchdog-jailed-bribery-2026-09-15/
2. Caixin Global — "China Regulator Ousted in Vaccine Scandal Now Faces Bribery Prosecution," December 8, 2025: https://www.caixinglobal.com/2025-12-08/china-regulator-ousted-in-vaccine-scandal-now-faces-bribery-prosecution-102391221.html
3. Radio Free Asia — "China To Execute Former Drug Regulator," May 28, 2007: https://www.rfa.org/english/news/china_graft-20070528.html
4. FiercePharma — "Former China FDA chief to resign over country's latest vaccine scandal," August 2018: https://www.fiercepharma.com/vaccines/former-china-fda-chief-to-resign-over-country-s-latest-vaccine-scandal

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