China Telecom’s former general manager, Yang Xiaowei, only barely managed—through a competitive selection—to land the position of Vice President at China Unicom that year, but he very quickly started taking money.

Operator Finance Network Gossip/Article

Recently, Yang Xiaowei, the former General Manager of China Telecom Group, was indicted for bribery, and it has finally become clear when he actually started getting into trouble: it turns out that as early as when he served as Deputy General Manager of China Unicom Group, he began to take bribes, and he continued to do so for over 20 years.

So, how did he succeed in competing for the position of Deputy General Manager of Unicom? That still requires real skill.

In 2003, 40-year-old Yang Xiaowei took over as General Manager of Guangdong Unicom, but in fact, he only served as General Manager of Guangdong Unicom for 7 months and 5 days before leaving, because he achieved a leap through competition and became Deputy General Manager of China Unicom.

At that time, six central enterprises publicly recruited seven senior management personnel domestically and internationally. Since it was a global talent recruitment, the scale of applicants was obviously large. In addition, the assessment was particularly strict, involving three months of written exams, interviews, and comprehensive evaluations of morality, ability, diligence, performance, and integrity.

The person involved recalled to Operator Finance Network that this open recruitment was conducted according to procedures such as voluntary registration, qualification review, unified examination, assessment, and appointment decision. A total of 463 people applied, and after qualification review, 135 people qualified for the written exam, of whom 126 took the exam, and the top 8 scores for each position advanced to the interview stage.

Based on the combined scores of written exams and interviews, with a ratio of 4:6, each candidate’s overall score was calculated. After consulting the main responsible persons of the six recruiting enterprises, candidates for assessment were strictly selected from the top three in the overall exam scores for each position.

In the end, seven candidates stood out, and two of them became group vice presidents of China Unicom, with the first place being Yang Xiaowei.

However, unexpectedly, this hard-won promotion through competition was exploited by Yang Xiaowei to start accepting bribes and abusing his position after his promotion.

According to investigations, he not only accepted gifts and banquets but also used “back doors” in employee recruitment, and tolerated or condoned relatives seeking personal gain—his son may also have been involved. Moreover, he used his position to profit from business operations, project bidding, and engineering contracting, and illegally received huge amounts of money.

After Yang Xiaowei was indicted this time, the next step is the trial phase. It is unknown how many years he will be sentenced to. He is already 62 years old this year, which is quite lamentable—despite reaching a high position with great difficulty, he did not cherish it, and in the end, he faces imprisonment in his later years!

(Editor: Wu Bihui)