The Retired Vice Governor’s Moutai Theft: 4 Questions the Verdict Didn’t Answer

2.43 Million Yuan in Moutai and a Ten-and-a-Half-Year Sentence: Four Open Questions in a Theft Case

On the evening of October 16, 2023, in Jinan, police waited near Chen Lao’s home. Around 9 p.m., a Lynk & Co SUV appeared. The driver was Li, the steward for Chen Lao’s daughter, Chen Lu (not her real name). Police opened the trunk. Inside were boxes of Moutai, Wuliangye, and red wine. Some bottles were real. Some were fake. Li had sold the real liquor and put fake bottles back in place. He was waiting to do it again.

This scene sounds like a film. The judgment is colder.

On August 25, 2026, the Qingdao Intermediate People’s Court rejected Li’s appeal and upheld the original sentence. Li received ten years and six months for theft. The case is legally final. The public argument is not. The interesting question is not how much Moutai sat in a vice governor’s home. It is why the charge was theft and not embezzlement, how 2.43 million yuan in liquor was accounted for, why reporting a vice governor did not earn Li leniency, and who was supposed to watch the liquor stored in a retired vice-provincial official’s home.

I. A Cook’s Rise: How Trust Built Up

Li was born in Weihai, Shandong, in 1988. He had a junior-college education and studied cooking at Shandong City Service Vocational College. The résumé was not impressive. It got him into Chen Lu’s household. Chen Lu liked his cooking background. She gave him a job at a private equity fund management company in Qingdao that she controlled. He was her driver and personal assistant. The salary was about 5,000 yuan a month.

In early 2021, Chen Lu asked Li to live in the Jinan home. That made it easier for him to care for her father, Chen Lao, who was nearly eighty. Li later said that when the housekeeper was away, he cooked and helped with Chen Lao’s daily needs. Later, Chen Lu handed him invoice sorting and administrative work at the company.

Trust built in steps. First he drove. Then he cooked. Then he handled invoices. Then he cared for the old man. Li was diligent, quick, and socially skilled. Chen Lu and her family came to trust him. That trust let him move through homes in Qingdao, Jinan, and Beijing. It also gave him access to liquor, jewelry, and a safe.

Trust is not custody. Chen Lu and her family never told Li to keep the liquor or other valuables for them. That point decided the charge.

On October 10, 2023, Chen Lu’s husband He Ku (not his real name) reported to police that six boxes of Feitian Moutai and other valuables were missing from their home in Huangdao District, Qingdao. He suspected Li. On October 16, He Ku filed a second report. After taking inventory, he said their home in Xicheng District, Beijing, and Chen Lao’s home in Jinan had also been robbed. Losses across the homes totaled at least 1.2 million yuan.

The stolen items included Moutai, Wuliangye, tea, ejiao, watches, red wine, and foreign liquor from Qingdao; Moutai and Wuliangye from the basement warehouse of the Jinan home; and jewelry from a safe in Beijing. In total: at least 50 boxes of Moutai, 2 boxes of Wuliangye, 20 bottles of red wine, 5 boxes of tea, an unknown amount of ejiao, a watch, a pair of diamond rings, an emerald ring, and several sapphire rings.

On the evening of October 16, 2023, Li went back to Chen Lao’s Jinan home to steal again. Police were waiting. They caught him.

II. The Charge: Why Not Embezzlement?

At trial, Li’s lawyer argued for embezzlement. Li was a steward, the lawyer said. He had permission to touch, handle, and keep the items. So his conduct was embezzlement, not theft.

This dispute decided the sentence.

Embezzlement means taking property that was entrusted to you and refusing to return it. The amount must be relatively large. The maximum sentence is much lower than for theft. Even for a huge amount, embezzlement carries at most five years. Theft, once the amount is “especially huge,” carries more than ten years or life.

The court chose theft. Its reason: Chen Lu and her family never gave Li custody of the liquor or other valuables. Li could enter the home and do chores. That did not mean the Moutai and jewelry were his to keep. He stole property without the owners’ knowledge. That fits theft.

The distinction looks technical. It is not. A steward is not automatically a custodian. Letting someone in the door, letting him cook, letting him sort invoices, does not mean handing him the safe and the wine cellar. Li used the opportunity that trust gave him. He did not have custody. Opportunity is theft. Custody could be embezzlement.

That is why prosecutors and the complainant pushed for theft. If the court had chosen embezzlement, the ten-and-a-half-year sentence would have had no legal basis.

III. The 2.43 Million Yuan in Liquor: Do Purchase Records Explain Everything?

The source of the property drew the most attention.

Li said in his account: “I sold 2.43 million yuan worth of liquor, and Chen Lao did not even notice. You can imagine how much liquor was in his home.” He also said: “I knew the liquor was all given by others. I thought that even if he found out, he would not dare to report it. So when I sold the liquor I never used cash. I always used direct bank transfers.”

Those statements raised a sharper question. Why did a retired vice governor’s home hold so much Moutai and other expensive liquor?

At trial, Chen Lu explained. She said all the liquor in the home was bought by her with lawful personal funds starting in 2006. She bought it from tobacco-and-liquor stores and hotels in Beijing, Jinan, Yantai, and other cities. Most of it was kept in her Qingdao home and her parents’ Jinan home. She submitted a statement to the Huangdao District Court in Qingdao. She said she had worked in finance for years and was studying for an EMBA and a doctorate at Tsinghua University. She had many classmates and friends and many receptions. Moutai also holds and increases in value, she said. The longer it sits, the better it tastes and the more it is worth. Friends advised her to stock up. She bought baijiu and red wine for receptions and collected Moutai as an asset.

She produced records.

Jinan Meinuo Hotel Management Co., Ltd. certified in November 2024 that Chen Lu personally bought 15 to 20 boxes of Moutai and 10 to 15 boxes of red wine each year from 2015 to 2023. The next month, the company issued another certificate. It said that from January 2012 to December 2018 it sold Chen Lu 66.5 boxes of 53-degree Feitian Moutai (500 ml by 6 bottles per box). On May 16, 2025, Beijing Pingruixiang Convenience Store certified that from 2006 to 2014 it sold Chen Lu 78 boxes of Moutai (500 ml per bottle, 6 bottles per box).

The court accepted the evidence. Judges rely on what is presented at trial. If the evidence is sufficient, sentencing follows the statute. Whether the evidence is genuine and how much weight it carries are matters for the court.

Outside court, doubts remained. Three reasons.

First, most certificates came from suppliers years later. They covered more than a decade. Could they match the physical bottles? Second, even if the purchase records are real, they show only that Chen Lu bought liquor. They do not rule out gifts mixed into the stock. Third, a retired vice governor’s home with dozens or hundreds of boxes of Moutai invites thoughts of special supply, quotas, and gifts.

The reported leads have not been verified. Chen Lao cannot be called a bribe-taker on that basis. Chen Lu cannot be called a bribe-giver. But public doubt has a basis. In China, Moutai is not just liquor. It is hard currency, social currency, and a lubricant for power and relationships. When a retired vice-provincial official’s home loses millions of yuan in famous liquor, people ask who bought it, what it was for, and why it was stored if it could not be drunk.

The criminal trial answered what Li stole. It did not answer why the liquor was there.

IV. The Fake Bottles: Swaps, Trust, and Loose Control

Police found boxes of Moutai, Wuliangye, and red wine in the trunk of Li’s Lynk & Co SUV. Appraisers checked them. Of 44 bottles of Moutai, 42 were fake. Of 8 bottles of Wuliangye, 4 were fake. Only 2 bottles of Moutai and 4 bottles of Wuliangye were real. They were worth about 14,700 yuan.

That detail matters. Li’s method was to swap. He stole real bottles. He bought fake bottles. He put the fake bottles back exactly where the real ones had been. Chen Lao’s stock was so large that he did not notice in time. Li kept going.

The fake bottles also show how loosely the home was managed. A retired vice governor’s basement warehouse held large amounts of Moutai and Wuliangye. No one took inventory for a long time. A steward could replace real liquor with fake liquor and not be caught. That looseness let Li keep stealing. It also feeds public suspicion about where the liquor came from.

Li said: “I sold 2.43 million yuan worth of liquor, and Chen Lao did not even notice.” That sentence says two things. The amount was large. The management was loose. Loose management does not change the crime. Abuse of trust is not authorization for custody.

V. Reporting and Leniency: Why No Reduction?

After his arrest, Li and his wife Jiang reported to disciplinary inspection and supervision organs several times. They said Chen Lu was suspected of offering bribes. They said her father, Chen Lao, was suspected of taking bribes and having huge property of unknown origin.

The Qingdao Intermediate People’s Court said the leads had not been verified. So they did not legally count as meritorious service. No lighter sentence followed.

Legally, that finding holds. Under criminal law, meritorious service requires exposing another person’s crime and having it verified, or providing important leads that solve another case. A report or a personal account is not enough. If it were, any suspect could report someone and trade it for leniency. Judicial order would not hold.

Socially, the detail still matters. The person reported is a retired vice governor. Checking such leads takes time, evidence, and procedure. “Not yet verified” within a criminal trial’s time limit does not mean “nothing there.” Whether disciplinary organs will verify Li’s report has no public answer.

Reporting is not a get-out-of-jail card. Meritorious service must be verified. But when a report names a high-ranking official, verification is hard. The public can reasonably expect the leads will not be dropped just because the criminal case is final.

VI. The Sentence: Where Ten and a Half Years Came From

Li received ten years and six months for theft. That falls in the “especially huge amount” range. It is not the maximum.

The court may have considered several factors. Some stolen goods were recovered. Li’s wife paid 200,000 yuan in restitution. Police froze more than 844,000 yuan in cash under Li’s name. But Li denied his theft methods and locations at both the first trial and the appeal. He did not plead guilty and accept punishment. The court found his subjective malice relatively great. That limited the leniency.

Ten years and six months is a long time for a man born in 1988, about 35 when he committed the crimes. He had a job paying about 5,000 yuan a month and what looked like stable employment. He chose to swap his employer’s liquor for bank transfers. He could not stop. That pattern appears in many crimes by people close to a household.

VII. Three Questions That Matter

The case drew attention beyond an ordinary theft for three structural reasons.

First, supervising officials’ family property. Retirement does not remove supervision. A retired vice governor’s home held large amounts of expensive liquor. The criminal trial covered the source with purchase records. Public supervision did not close. Moutai works as hard currency. Its financial quality makes stockpiling liquor a form of asset allocation for some families. It can also hide transfers of benefits. How to supervise the property of officials and their families, especially after retirement, remains open.

Second, reviewing the source of property in a criminal case. A theft trial tries theft, not corruption. The court can find that Li stole liquor. It cannot in that trial decide whether the liquor involved bribery. The reported leads went to disciplinary organs. The conclusion that they are “not yet verified” does not answer public questions about power. Law can try theft. It cannot always answer source.

Third, crimes by people close to a household. Li is not the first and will not be the last. Stewards, nannies, drivers, and personal assistants live in a gap. They are trusted but not fully accepted. They touch wealth but do not own it. In Parasite, Bong Joon-ho showed that a forged identity or a false sense of trust can win favor with the wealthy, but it cannot turn a parasite into a superior person. Li was clever, diligent, socially skilled, and a good cook. He could win Chen Lu’s trust for a time. He could not make her believe forever that he had only committed embezzlement. In the real world, few people stop while ahead. Once they start, they keep going. So do not do a small evil.

Conclusion: A Final Sentence, Open Questions

Li’s ten-and-a-half-year sentence is final. The judgment is settled in law.

The source of the Moutai is not settled in public. Chen Lu’s purchase records were accepted in court. They did not end public doubt. Li’s report was found “not yet verified.” That does not answer every question.

In In the Name of the People, Qi Tongwei spends his life wanting to be vice governor. He wants the title, but also the power, treatment, and security behind it. This case brings him to mind not because a vice governor is involved. It brings him to mind because it shows that power needs supervision, retirement is not a safe, trust is not custody, and a theft trial cannot answer every question about where property came from.

Li paid ten and a half years for a lesson. The stolen Moutai, and whatever power may lie behind it, still has no full public answer.