Sun Xiaoguo at an event in M2 bar, which he owns. Photo: M2 Club

China's central government on Friday ordered a thorough investigation into a convicted rapist, who was sentenced to death two decades ago but was recently found to be roaming at large and alleged as a leader of a criminal gang.

After an inspection into Southwest China's Yunnan Province in April, the central government's task force group in fighting gangsters ordered the local government to organize capable personnel and launch a thorough investigation of the "Sun Xiaoguo case" of gang crimes.

However, the public soon discovered that the person at the center of the gang had been given a death sentence in 1998 for raping and maliciously injuring several women.

After media reports sparked public suspicion, the task force group ordered the timely publishing of results in response to public concerns. After hearing from the central government's task force group, Yunnan government said they would launch a thorough investigation into anyone who provided protection for Sun and would offer no lenience toward these people.

Sun had been a repeated law breaker in Kunming. In 1994, he was given a three-year sentence for rape and allowed to serve the sentence "outside prison;" three years later he was again detained for the same reason. 

Then in 1998, Kunming intermediate people's court gave him the death penalty after he was found to have raped and injured several women in 1997.

Sun disappeared from the public spotlight ever since until a front page story on the Kunming Daily on April 24, which said that officials at a conference announced that Kunming had cracked down on several "gang-related criminal groups" in the city, including one allegedly led by a man named Sun Xiaoguo. 

Then, media discovered that this Sun was the same man who had been convicted in 1998, and he has changed his name and was known to the public as a boss of a famous bar.

No public information suggested that Sun was released from prison after the death sentence, nor that his punishment had been pardoned.

But media discovered that a "linkage locking-type anti-theft manhole cover" was registered with the national patent office under Sun's name in 2008. The patent's agent surnamed He confirmed with thepaper.cn the patent holder is Sun Xiaoguo. 

Under China's Criminal Law, convicts may have their prison terms reduced for making important technical innovations or inventions.

How Sun was finally released and became a free soul has befuddled the public. Some media reports have linked this to Sun's family background.

In December 1997, after Sun's atrocities were exposed, his parents voiced their shock, anger and condemnation about their son via local media. In the reports they said they were just law enforcers at the grassroots level, suggesting they had no capacity to cover up their son's violations.

However, Southern Weekly reported in early 1998 that Sun's mother had repeatedly contacted personnel who were handing the case, demanding to see the case materials. 

In May this year, Southern Weekly again voiced that Sun's parents have been soliciting leniency on Sun's behalf every time he was behind bars. It also discovered Sun's mother's last occupation was in a police station in Guandu district of Kunming, and his stepfather was director of Wuhua district police station in Kunming and head of Wuhua urban management bureau since 2002, but he retired in 2018.

Global Times