Wu Ying and the death penalty in China. Trying to understand

She allegedly committed a few crimes such as co-mingling personal funds with investment funds, bribery, false accounting, but the one crime that got her death penalty is illegal fund raising from private individuals.

The details of the case is very complicated. Basically, she raised from several self-titled money managers around 200 million yuan ( $30 million USD) in a span of a few years. The monies came either from these managers private pocket or downstream fund raising from other money managers or individuals. On the book, Chinese law prohibits private fund raising in this form, but Wu certainly was not the first one doing this. The private market for fund raising in coastal provinces, as matter of fact, is well and alive, despite Wu's case. The private funding has been the only source of operating funds for many small businesses in the coastal areas for as long as the CCP allows such business.

Wu did not run a ponzi scheme like Madoff. The investors of her fund were aware of what she was up to with the money, i.e. investing in real estate, enterprises, shops, etc. Wu promised them a very high return, but they knew the risk. Also unlike Madoff, Wu's investment actually could have made whole of investor's money had it not been frozen by the Chinese authority. The current worth of her investment, according to the media, is around 500 million yuan.

So you can see the death penalty is not warranted from a retribution point of view. Many established Chinese economists have been very critical of Wu
s case and openly calling for the abolishment of such law altogether. Activist questions the motive to put Wu to death, suspecting the real problem is that a few high-up corrupted officials want to silence Wu forever. This case exposes many issues in the Chinese system. You can shoot some specific questions so we can keep focused.