Purges of Top Tech Officials Show Cracks in China’s Big Data Ambitions

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Jul 7, 2025 - 09:53 Updated: Jul 6, 2025 - 22:58
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Purges of Top Tech Officials Show Cracks in China’s Big Data Ambitions
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News Analysis

As U.S.-China tensions escalate over tech and national security, a new wave of corruption scandals is shaking the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) big data sector, one of the regime’s most strategically important industries.

On July 2, Chinese state media reported that Yu Shiyang, head of the Big Data Development Department at China’s State Information Center, is under investigation for “serious violations of discipline and law,” a phrase widely understood in China to mean political misconduct or corruption.

In most cases, such investigations do not result in open trials. Instead, officials are often detained in secret, disappear from public view, and are quietly removed from their posts.

Yu is the latest in a growing list of high-level officials in China’s data and tech sector to fall from grace. Yu, who once held a visiting scholar position at MIT, was considered a rising star in China’s digital governance sector, an unusual profile for a CCP official due to his international experience. He also served as executive deputy director of the Internet and Big Data Center under the powerful National Development and Reform Commission, Beijing’s top economic planning agency.

The announcement was jointly issued by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the CCP’s top anti-corruption body, and its counterpart in Hebei Province, underscoring the political weight behind the case.
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Widespread Corruption at China’s Data Hub

The investigation into Yu is part of a broader pattern that has plagued China’s big data sector, particularly in Guizhou Province, which the CCP has touted as a national data hub since 2016. Once hailed as China’s first national-level big data experimental zone, Guizhou signed a landmark deal in 2018 allowing a local government-backed company, Guizhou-Cloud Big Data, to partner with Apple in operating iCloud services within mainland China.

However, behind the scenes, Guizhou’s data boom has become a political liability. Multiple senior officials spanning provincial data regulators, mayors, and executives at state-owned tech firms have been caught in sweeping anti-corruption probes.

Notable among them is Ma Ningyu, Guizhou’s former top big data official and the original architect of the province’s digital transformation strategy. He was detained in August last year amid allegations of abusing public data resources for private gain. Projects he championed are now under scrutiny for fraudulent procurement practices.

Another scandal involves Jing Yaping, who was purged on Feb. 24. Until her retirement, she led the provincial Big Data Development Bureau. She allegedly rigged bids for the Chinese regime’s IT contracts by embedding encryption watermarks in tender documents, ensuring her son-in-law’s shell company won lucrative contracts. The scheme reportedly caused a 2 billion yuan ($280 million) budget overrun.

Investigators also alleged that government servers under her watch were secretly used to mine Bitcoin. Authorities discovered 327 remaining Bitcoins in the mining pool, worth around $35 million at current valuations. The discovery was particularly problematic given Beijing’s 2021 blanket ban on cryptocurrency mining, citing energy waste and financial risk.
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The purge shows no sign of slowing. On Feb. 26, Liu Lan, Guizhou’s deputy mayor overseeing big data, was removed from office, according to Chinese state media reports. On April 3, Yang Yunyong, head of a Guizhou provincial government-backed computing firm, was purged, and Li Gang, a former deputy director of Guizhou’s Big Data Bureau and provincial military-civil fusion office, fell under investigation on May 16.
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CCP’s Big Data Ambitions

The fallout has raised alarm about the fragility of China’s efforts to build a global edge in artificial intelligence (AI). Big data is foundational to AI development, and Chinese leader Xi Jinping has long championed the integration of big data, artificial intelligence, and traditional industries since 2022.
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On June 26, RAND Corporation, an influential American defense and policy think tank, warned that Beijing sees data as a strategic asset in its bid to become a dominant world power in the field of AI. China’s local governments have launched so-called “data marketplaces” that allow state agencies and companies to trade datasets. These platforms aim to standardize and commercialize data exchange between state and private entities, fueling AI development without formal data ownership transfer. The goal is to build up AI capabilities by widening access to large-scale training data.
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In addition, big data is critical in the CCP’s attempts at foreign influence and espionage. Last year, Canadian intelligence chief Daniel Rogers raised national security concerns over China’s use of big data to carry out foreign interference activities. He specifically named the data held by TikTok as potentially being capable of ending up in the hands of the CCP.
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The CCP also seeks to acquire and exploit big data for its military use. The U.S. State Department states on its website that China wants to become the first nation to transition to “intelligence warfare” via military-civil fusion, a strategy that includes theft to acquire advanced technologies, which include big data.

With top officials in Beijing’s data apparatus falling in rapid succession, the CCP’s ambitions for digital dominance may be unraveling from within.

Tang Bing contributed to this report. 
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