For the first time, I am moved by a "corrupted" Chinese official.

On a evening of July 9th, 2004, Yu Bing, the deputy Mayor of Linxiang, Hunan Province received a note from the prosecutor of the local counter-corruption bureau for a interview.
On July 30th, Yu was formally arrested. On the October 22nd, the local prosecutor accused Yu for accepting bribe $12k and holding $13k illegal income from relatives and friends. On December 23rd, the local court made the decision: " defendant Yu Bing commits the crime for accepting bribe, and is sentenced to prison for three years with grace period five years. The court will confiscate Yu's property for about $8k plus $12k bribe and $13k illegal income.

This seems to be a extremely ordinary case in China. However it turns out this is highly atypical case.

The evidence shows that Yu have used about $20k to help poor villagers and solve many practical problems for local towns, enterprises, and schools, which otherwise could not be accessed through the formal channel.

Yu Bin's attorney argued that the court should have considered these facts and dropped the sentence towards Yu and started appeal for Yu from the last year.
However, on July 7th, 2005, the local court made the final decision to reject the appeal and maintain the original sentence.

Many local people feel very sorry for Yu because Yu was an very honest and upright person who is said has offended some local VIP. One former colleague of Yu said: Yu just don't know how to protect himself in this world.

On July 24th, Yu was interviewed by a reporter in his shabby rental apartment and disclosed his motives. As a deputy mayor, Yu only has $1.2k/year for his daily expenture including the maintaining cost of his car. Yu mentioned that the budget is so tight that he could do nothing and thought the bribe at least can be used to help people and solve some real problems. (In China, majority of government officials accept bribes. If you don't, then you won't get acceptance from your colleagues )

Feng Gang, the local educational bureau chief's assistant and a formal colleague of Yu said: "Yu commits absolutely no crime; nowadays, corrupt officicals all have private cars, houses, and secret lovers; what does Yu have?"

For the last several days, SINA.COM.CN, the biggest internet portal in China, has collected more than 50 editorials from various newspapers and set up the poll for its readers. It is interesting to see that there is a huge contrast between the position of state owned newspapers and internet surfers. As we can expect, newspaper dare not to point out the real reason of the prosecution towards Yu Bing. While Chinese internet surfers have showed their hearts for Yu Bing. Over 70% of them think the sentence is unfair and about 65% of them even don't think Yu has committed a crime because he didn't use the money for himself.