Yao Yao Jiang: Life Imprisonment, Ten-Billion Collapse, Dong Qing's Twenty Years

This episode reviews the ups and downs of former CCTV anchor Dong Qing over the past twenty years, exploring her covert connections with Sun Lijun and her wealthy husband Chunlei Mi, as well as the background of her recent comeback setback and the collapse of Chunlei Mi's multi-billion-yuan business empire.

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Hello everyone, I am Yao Yaojiang, who loves thinking and focuses on logic. On the evening of September 24, 2026, at the Beijing National Library Arts Center, a Mid-Autumn Poetry Gala took place. Item 11 on the printed program pamphlet read: Poetry reading of "Quiet Night Thoughts", recited by Dong Qing. This was the first time she appeared on the list of an official event in nearly five years since leaving the screen. She had already arrived in Beijing, but right before the show started, her poster was taken down and her name was crossed out. The performance was ultimately completed by a robot coming on stage to read it. Six days later, on September 30, her husband, the once multi-billion-yuan Shanghai wealthy businessman Chunlei Mi, stepped down as chairman of Shanghai Life Insurance. This insurance company was founded by him single-handedly, and now Shanghai state-owned assets have taken it over with tens of billions of yuan. He himself is burdened with 59 court-ordered restrictions on high consumption. More than four years ago, he was taken away by the police and lost contact for 158 days. The CCTV top anchor who hosted the Spring Festival Gala for 13 consecutive years and her wealthy husband have arrived at this point simultaneously. Behind these two events stands the same person: former Vice Minister of Public Security Sun Lijun. What kind of relationship did he actually have with Dong Qing?

Why use book lists to fill your life and then prevent you from engaging in literature and art? I feel that this is a particularly seemingly normal educational method for intellectuals of their generation.

Before dawn, on the playground of a middle school in Anhui, a junior high school girl was running laps. She had to finish one kilometer before all the teachers and students came out for morning exercises. If she failed to finish, she would have to keep running in front of the whole school. She recalled later that at such times, she felt as if the entire school was watching her and thought she looked particularly foolish. The person who woke her up from bed and threw her onto the playground was her father, Dong Shanxiang. This girl was Dong Qing. Dong Qing was born in 1973. Her father, Dong Shanxiang, graduated from the Fudan University Department of Journalism, and her mother, Jin Lude, graduated from the Fudan University Department of Physics. After graduation, both were assigned to Anhui, where they started a family. Later, her father was transferred to a newspaper office in Jiaxing, Zhejiang, and her mother taught middle school physics in Huaibei, Anhui for thirty-five years. Dong Qing grew up shuttling back and forth between Anhui and Zhejiang. Her father was very strict with her. He felt that girls did not need to spend time on grooming, and reading more books was better than anything else. Starting from the age of fifteen, every winter and summer vacation, he would call friends in various industries and find odd jobs for his daughter. Dong Qing had worked as a radio announcer, washed dishes in a restaurant, and cleaned hotel guest rooms, earning one yuan a day. Her mother was different. All the strictness in the family came from her father, while her mother was the one who softened things in the middle. When Dong Qing wanted to take the art school entrance exam, her father strongly opposed it, and the elders in the family did not approve either; only her mother stood by her side. In 1991, she was admitted to the Zhejiang Academy of Arts to study acting, and after graduation, she was assigned to the Zhejiang Provincial Theater Troupe. In 1994, she accompanied a friend to an interview for a host at Zhejiang Television and ended up getting hired herself. Two years ago, Shanghai Oriental Television recruited hosts nationwide, and her parents asked her to mail a tape to give it a try. Half a year later, she received a notice for the callback. In 1998, twenty-five-year-old Dong Qing took on a new show at Oriental Television called "Appointment on Saturday, Holding Hands with Love." This was a matchmaking and dating show where a group of single men and women chose each other on stage every Saturday night. As for Dong Qing, she stood in the middle to link things together. Pretty or not, I don't think it's a fundamental issue. I think the main thing depends on whether you can handle the situation or not. At that time, I was very confident, believing that I could handle beauties, the kind that could be settled, that bit of confidence I still had. Can you show off a couple of tricks then? The show became a hit, and Shanghai audiences remembered this short-haired, steady-spoken female host.

Around this same year, she had a romantic relationship of her own. Dong Qing later talked about this relationship in an interview. The other person was a civil servant, and she did not mention his name. She said that this person took out all his savings to buy her an Hermes bag worth tens of thousands of yuan. One Valentine's Day, he sent her an entire train compartment of white roses. Tens of thousands of yuan in Shanghai in 1998 was roughly several years' salary for an ordinary employee. This romance did not last. Dong Qing's own explanation was that it was her fault for being young, energetic, and too willful. She also said that she still missed him to this day, and she had kept that bag ever since. The overseas political affairs program "Zhengjing Lu Shezhang" offered a different explanation for this breakup: this boyfriend had a very strong desire for possession, trying to control both Dong Qing's work and her life, while she was on the rise in her career, and this man could not help her with anything.

In the same year, in the same city, a twenty-nine-year-old civil servant in the Foreign Affairs Office of the Shanghai Municipal Health Bureau named Sun Lijun existed. The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection later produced an anti-corruption documentary called "Zero Tolerance," which detailed Sun Lijun's background. After graduating from college, he first followed several Wenzhou businessmen in reselling steel, and at that time all he thought about was making money and buying a house and a car. Later, his father used connections to arrange a position for him in the health system. In 1999, he received a World Health Organization scholarship to study public health management in Australia. The official indictment stated that Sun Lijun began accepting money in 2001. That year he was the deputy director of the Foreign Affairs Office, and he agreed with a pharmaceutical businessman that he would be responsible for bridging relations between the government and hospitals, while the businessman would provide funds for operations, with profits split three-to-seven. He said in the documentary that at the time he thought being an official and getting rich could go hand in hand. More than twenty years later, Sun Lijun became the Vice Minister of Public Security and fell from power in 2020. At this point, several overseas Chinese-language media outlets dug up the relationship Dong Qing had talked about and raised a question: Was that Shanghai civil servant who bought the Hermes bag and sent a train compartment of white roses back then actually Sun Lijun? Dong Qing never responded. What matched were the time, location, and identity. In Shanghai in 1998, a twenty-five-year-old female television host and a twenty-nine-year-old municipal government foreign affairs cadre. Dong Qing said that relationship ended quickly, and Sun Lijun went abroad to study in 1999. Sun Lijun at that time was not even a deputy division chief. An ordinary foreign affairs cadre truly could not help a rising female host.

In May 2002, Dong Qing left Shanghai and was transferred to CCTV. Six years later, that Shanghai foreign affairs cadre, Sun Lijun, also arrived in Beijing; his destination was the Ministry of Public Security. It was also in this year, 2008, that Dong Qing spoke again about that Shanghai civil servant in an interview: she mentioned the Hermes bag he gave her, that carload of white roses on Valentine's Day, and said she still missed him to this day. Putting these words together with the reason for their breakup back then makes it interesting. According to Editor-in-Chief Lu, the two broke up ten years ago because this civil servant could not help her career. Ten years later, he was transferred to the Ministry of Public Security and had just embarked on the fast track of his political career, yet precisely at this moment, a 35-year-old, unmarried lead host of CCTV said in a public interview that she missed a former boyfriend. Dong Qing had always been very tight-lipped about her private life; later, when she got married and had children, the outside world only found out long after the fact. Yet, such a person described this relationship so specifically: what brand the bag was, how many roses were packed, and that the breakup was her own fault for being willful. Our judgment is that this was not a casual remark; it was intentionally said for someone to hear—she was extending an olive branch from afar.

An ancient saying goes: beauties are made of bone and blood from hell, their husbands are like hibiscus flowers not yet extinguished, like willows, and more importantly, they prioritize poetry; I think you are the standard of beauty in my mind.

CCTV's first position for Dong Qing was on the Western Channel, a channel rarely watched by anyone. In the first two years, she hosted over 130 galas and cultural programs, yet the audience still could not remember her name. In 2004, she was transferred to the Variety Channel to host the 11th Young Singer TV Grand Prix. How did this Cao Fujia, after singing, magically produce a pair of glasses from behind her back and put them on? Do you want to know why? This was her first time taking the lead after arriving at CCTV. On the nights the competition was broadcast, her mother, Jin Lude, sat in front of the TV from the very first episode, holding a notebook, recording one by one whether her daughter's clothes fit well and if her expressions were correct. As soon as the program ended, the phone call would come, and she would go over it with her item by item. What her mother said to her was simple: you can do well if you perform normally; the key is to be confident. During the 2005 Spring Festival, 31-year-old Dong Qing stood on the CCTV Spring Festival Gala stage for the first time. From this year on, she hosted the Spring Festival Gala for 13 consecutive years. Although more than a decade has passed, the scene of her first time on the Spring Festival Gala is still vivid in her mind. I still remember the feeling of my heart pounding when the curtain was about to rise. She later spoke of the other side of the Spring Festival Gala's bustle. After hosting the gala, she walked alone on the empty streets, returned home, and boiled a bowl of frozen dumplings. She said that was the loneliness after the prosperity. In 2006, she won the Golden Microphone Award and the Golden Eagle Award for Best Host. Within two or three years, the media began calling her CCTV's "Number One Sister." In these years, she was also invited to host galas for various ministries. From 2006 to 2008, she hosted the Ministry of Public Security's Spring Festival Gala for three consecutive years. The Ministry of Public Security was changing personnel at this time; in October 2007, Minister Zhou Yongkang entered the Politburo Standing Committee, and the successor as minister was Meng Jianzhu. Meng Jianzhu was a cadre who came out of Shanghai and had served as Deputy Secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee in the 1990s. When Sun Lijun was in Shanghai, he had already established a connection with Meng Jianzhu.

Hong Kong's Apple Daily cited an insider at the time: when Meng Jianzhu was transferred to Jiangxi as Provincial Party Secretary in 2001, his wife remained in Shanghai, and it was Sun Lijun who took care of her. How did he take care of her? Hong Kong industrialist Yuan Gongyi mentioned this in a live broadcast in 2020: when Meng Jianzhu was transferred to Jiangxi, his wife fell ill; she had a tumor in her brain, and the location was difficult, so she could not be operated on easily. Sun Lijun took her to the Loma Linda University Medical Center in California, USA, where they used proton therapy to treat the tumor, which could only handle a small piece at a time. Sun Lijun accompanied her there for three or four months, and the illness was cured. Looking at it from the perspective of Sun Lijun's status, this matter is not strange at all; he was a foreign affairs cadre in the Shanghai health system, a translator by training, familiar with hospitals, and understood English. Arranging for leaders' family members to go abroad for medical treatment was exactly the ready-made path he had at his disposal. A young cadre from the Health Bureau thus became an indispensable person in Meng Jianzhu's family. In 2008, Sun Lijun was transferred to Beijing, became Deputy Director of the General Office of the Ministry of Public Security, and served as secretary to Meng Jianzhu. Gao Xin, a columnist for Radio Free Asia, said that the person who recommended him to the Ministry of Public Security was then-Shanghai Mayor Han Zheng. A health foreign affairs cadre who had never been a police officer for a single day thus entered the nerve center of the Ministry of Public Security. He once said in a documentary by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection that before working in Beijing, he had never run a red light, but after arriving at the Ministry of Public Security, he felt that running red lights was normal. The American magazine "Grand Event" later wrote this: Sun Lijun had long pursued a popular CCTV female anchor; the two began dating in Shanghai and had been in secret contact for at least ten years, which many at CCTV were well aware of. The magazine did not name names, but overseas media generally believed it was referring to Dong Qing.

Not long after Sun Lijun arrived in Beijing, Dong Qing met a Shanghai businessman five years her junior. Before the Spring Festival in 2012, CCTV-1 aired the Ministry of Public Security's Spring Festival Gala, titled "Ten Thousand Lights on a Peaceful Night." The scale that year was massive. The chief director was Chen Weiya, who had been the deputy chief director of the Beijing Olympics opening ceremony, and there were over two thousand performers and staff, including Mao Amin, Song Zuying, Zhao Benshan, and Feng Gong. The hosts standing in the center of the stage were Zhu Jun, Dong Qing, and Zhang Zequn. Dong Qing was among the hosts for the Ministry of Public Security's gala the following year as well. This time, Sun Lijun was a new presence within the Ministry. He had only been in the Ministry for four years, yet he was already one of the most capable aides to the Minister. One incident reveals his weight at the time: in 2010, the Ministry of Public Security held a training session for municipal police chiefs across the country, and Sun Lijun took a liking to Gong Dao'an, the police chief of Xianning City, Hubei Province. According to the CCDI documentary, Sun Lijun took the initiative to win him over, recommending and maneuvering him all the way to become the deputy director of the Technical Investigation Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security. In the documentary, Gong Dao'an himself stated that Sun Lijun asked him directly if he was willing to come to the Ministry of Public Security and join the Technical Investigation Bureau. The Technical Investigation Bureau manages technical investigations for the national police, including wiretapping and geolocation. At the time, Sun Lijun was only a deputy director of the General Office; he could not have transferred a municipal police chief directly into such a department based on his own rank—it was Meng Jianzhu behind him. The documentary also stated that Sun Lijun took a large sum from the money he had received to help Gong Dao'an pay for his child's housing and arrange jobs for his relatives; he even distributed so-called "bonuses" to Gong Dao'an's team. Gong Dao'an later rose to become the Shanghai Police Chief and Vice Mayor of Shanghai. In 2013, Sun Lijun became the director of the First Bureau of the Ministry of Public Security (Domestic Security Protection Bureau). The First Bureau handles cases involving regime security within the country and is the most secretive department in the Ministry of Public Security. That year, he was forty-four.

Returning to the Shanghai businessman Dong Qing met: his name was Mi Chunlei, who would later become her husband. How did the two meet? There are two versions circulating. One comes from Gao Xin. He wrote in 2022 that Dong Qing claimed publicly that she met Mi Chunlei at a gathering of friends. This is basically true, but incomplete: that friend was Sun Lijun, who had just been transferred from Shanghai to the Ministry of Public Security. Gao Xin said he had heard this story before Sun Lijun fell from grace. The other version comes from Editor Lu. His account is that around 2010, Dong Qing returned to Shanghai to host a networking event for entrepreneurs, where she met Mi Chunlei. Later, because of her connection, Mi Chunlei gained Sun Lijun's approval. Both versions, though the occasions differ, point to the same person: Sun Lijun. Dong Qing has never responded to this.

Mi Chunlei was born in December 1978 to a farming family in Chongming, Shanghai, and was an only child. Chongming is an island at the mouth of the Yangtze River, which was very poor at the time. According to a report by "Dengshenxian," an investigative column under the China Business Journal, Mi Chunlei did not attend university and started working at a very young age, initially running transport for the Chongming County Public Security Bureau's traffic team, and later opening his own road materials company. The family also had a Chongming Road Construction Company, with his father, Mi Boyuan, as the legal representative. Dong Qing's ancestral home also happens to be Chongming. In September 2003, twenty-four-year-old Mi Chunlei and his father registered a company in Chongming called Shanghai Zhongying Enterprise Development Co., Ltd., with a registered capital of 50 million yuan, 40 million of which was provided by Mi Chunlei himself. Where did a young man who started in transport get 40 million yuan in cash? His public explanation was that he earned it from futures trading. The reporter who covered this story wrote that this explanation might not be true. To this day, no one has clearly explained the source of this money. The company was later renamed Shanghai Life Insurance (Lanhai) Holdings. When he met Dong Qing, Mi Chunlei was in his early thirties, mainly working in real estate in Chongming, and almost no one outside knew his name. Dong Qing was thirty-six or thirty-seven, one of the most familiar female hosts to national audiences, and was not yet married. 45 years later, Dong Qing married Mi Chunlei.

After that Spring Festival, I knew that there would not be any new programs for a while. That rest period was an indefinite one, and you had no idea when you would step onto the stage again. On January 30, 2014, the Year of the Horse Spring Festival Gala. Dong Qing stood on stage alongside Zhang Guoli, Zhu Jun, Li Sisi, and Bi Fujian. This was her tenth consecutive year hosting the Gala. As soon as the Gala ended, she made a decision that surprised many people: she left the stage to spend a year as a visiting scholar at the USC Marshall School of Business. Three years later, speaking about this in an interview with CCTV's "Face to Face", she said it was like a sudden brake and she felt crashed. She knew there would be no new programs for a long time, and for countless nights, she sat alone in her study in a daze. She said she needed some distance and a pause. In the same interview, she spoke of her mother. Her mother once told her that sooner or later we would leave this world, and added, "I hope there is still someone in this world who loves you the way we do." When the reporter asked her why she wanted children, she said many things could no longer be delayed. Also in 2014, Dong Qing married Mi Chunlei. The wedding was not made public, and it took a long time for the outside world to learn that CCTV's top anchor had gotten married, let alone who her husband was. Soon after, she had a son. All at once, your time is taken up by him, and then it becomes very trivial and mediocre. After the 2016 Spring Festival Gala, she left her child with her parents in Shanghai, and her retired mother helped her daughter raise her grandson. That year, her husband's business suddenly shifted in a new direction. The first thing was an insurance license. On September 18, 2014, the China Insurance Regulatory Commission issued an announcement approving the preparation of Shanghai Life Insurance Co., Ltd. There were ten founding shareholders in total, and the list included Shanghai Electric, Shanghai Chengtou, Waigaoqiao Group, Lujiazui Finance, and Shanghai International Group—roughly half of Shanghai's state-owned assets—along with a subsidiary of a central enterprise, China Shipping Group Investment Company under China Shipping. Ranked in first place was Mi Chunlei's company. The proposed chairman was Mi Chunlei. In February of the following year, Shanghai Life opened in the Shanghai Pilot Free Trade Zone, becoming the first nationwide personal insurance company in the zone. An insurance license is one of the hardest licenses to obtain in the financial industry. For so many state-owned enterprises to accompany a private company in founding an insurance company and let the private company take the seat of the largest shareholder was very rare at the time. Bureau Chief Lu's statement in the program was that this license was operated behind the scenes by Sun Lijun, who first had several state-owned enterprises take the lead in submitting a report to the Shanghai Municipal Government, and then asked Shanghai municipal leaders to step forward and recommend it to the Insurance Regulatory Commission. The chairman of the Insurance Regulatory Commission who approved the license that year was Xiang Junbo, who also fell from grace three years later.

The second matter began ten days before the opening of Shanghai Life. In February 2015, the Central Ninth Inspection Group fed back its inspection results to China Shipping, naming individuals within the company who had handed over business at low prices or even below cost to companies belonging to themselves or their relatives and friends, thereby embezzling state-owned assets. The person who listened to the feedback at the meeting and made a statement on rectification was Xu Lirong, Chairman of China Shipping. On June 4, China Shipping signed an agreement with Mi Chunlei's company to transfer 14% of the shares of its listed subsidiary, China Shipping Haisheng, to him at 12.50 yuan per share,

with a total price of over 1.029 billion. Immediately afterwards, China Shipping Haisheng made a private placement to another company of Mi Chunlei's. Having spent about three billion yuan in total, Mi Chunlei became the actual controller of this listed company. The following year, China Shipping Haisheng packaged all its ships and shipping assets and sold them back to the central enterprise. The central enterprise took the ships back, leaving Mi Chunlei with a clean listed company shell. On January 4, 2016, China Shipping and China Ocean Shipping merged to form China COSCO Shipping Corporation. The chairman of the new group was Xu Lirong. Four months passed from the inspection group's naming of the company to the sale of the listed company to Mi Chunlei, and seven months later, Xu Lirong became the chairman of the newly merged central enterprise. This favor was not given for free. Among the central enterprise cadres who handled this listed company, there was another person named Liu Chong. He had served as the chief accountant of China Shipping Haisheng and also as the general manager of China Shipping Group Investment Company, which was precisely one of the founding shareholders of Shanghai Life. In November 2023, Liu Chong was taken away for investigation. Caixin reported that his case might involve the backdoor listing case of a listed company under China Group a few years ago.

The third thing happened in Yunnan. In August 2016, Chen Hao became the Party Secretary of Yunnan. Chen Hao was an official who rose through the ranks in Shanghai, having served as the Deputy Secretary-General of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee and Director of the General Office of the Municipal Party Committee in the late 1990s. During those years, Meng Jianzhu was the Deputy Secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee. At the end of the second year after Chen Hao arrived in Yunnan, Mi Chunlei's company signed an agreement with the Yuxi Municipal Government to build a health city on the east bank of Fuxian Lake, planned for 7,000 mu with a total investment of 27.2 billion. In 2018, Mi Chunlei acquired a 19.5% stake in Qujing Commercial Bank in Yunnan, becoming tied as the largest shareholder. In the same year, a person nominated by his company became the chairman of this bank. An insurance license, a listed company, a bank—a person who started out running freight in Chongming achieved all this in less than four years. On the 2019 Hurun Report, his net worth was 6 billion, which surged to 10.5 billion a year later. Not a single one of these three things was obtained through Mi Chunlei's own ability. It was also during these years that the head of the Shanghai police (Public Security) changed. In 2017, Gong Daoan was transferred to serve as the Shanghai police chief, and the following year he also became the Vice Mayor of Shanghai. During the years when Dong Qing's husband's business was booming, the Shanghai police chief was precisely a man promoted by Sun Lijun. During those years, Dong Qing was on the stage while her husband was off stage; the outside world knew she had gotten married, but very few people knew whom she had married.

In April 2017, the first season of The Readers concluded, becoming the most popular cultural show of that year. Dong Qing was the producer, chief director, and host. The previous interview on Face to Face had been conducted on the very day the final episode was recorded. By this year, Sun Lijun was already a member of the Party Committee of the Ministry of Public Security, overseeing the state security (MSS) bureau and affairs concerning Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. In March of the following year, he was promoted to Vice Minister of Public Security. At the 2018 Spring Festival Gala, Dong Qing was absent for the first time. Her explanation was that her time and energy were limited and she wanted to focus on her own show, while the official WeChat of CCTV put it more bluntly: Miss Dong also wanted to go home for a family reunion. It was also in the first half of 2018 that an event went unnoticed at the time in the stock market. Sun Lijun's subsequent verdict stated that during that half-year, solicited by others, he ordered his subordinates to concentrate funds to continuously buy and sell stocks to prop up the stock price, helping someone avoid a loss of 145 million yuan. In that very same half-year, the listed company that Mi Chunlei had bought for 3 billion yuan was branded with an ST label due to two consecutive years of losses. The verdict did not specify which stock Sun Lijun manipulated.

In September 2019, Dong Qing's mother was diagnosed with late-stage ovarian cancer in Shanghai. The surgery consent form was signed by her mother herself. From this point on, Dong Qing slowly disappeared from the screen. On the evening of April 19, 2020, the website of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection issued an announcement: Sun Lijun, member of the Party Committee and Vice Minister of Public Security, was suspected of serious violations of discipline and law, and was undergoing disciplinary review and supervisory investigation. Over two months earlier, Sun Lijun had still been in Wuhan as a member of the central guiding group supervising epidemic prevention and control, frequently appearing in news footage. As soon as the news broke, the Ministry of Public Security held an overnight meeting that same evening to make its stance clear. During this time, Dong Qing had been in Shanghai; half a year earlier, her mother had just undergone major surgery. Two days later, on April 21, multiple accounts on Twitter posted news that after Sun Lijun fell from power, Dong Qing and another CCTV host, Li Sisi, had been taken away from the CCTV office for investigation. Also on this April 21, a commercial and residential land plot in Jing'an District, Shanghai, was put up for auction, and Mi Chunlei's Lianhai Holdings won it at a floor price of 6 billion yuan, becoming the king of land in Shanghai that year. Over the following week, domestic media did something rare: The Economic Observer's Deep-Sea Line published two consecutive articles unearthing Mi Chunlei's history of making a fortune, specifically pointing out that this person was the husband of CCTV host Dong Qing. Another internet influencer posted that a luxury mansion owned by Dong Qing and Mi Chunlei in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, was currently listed for sale with an asking price of 8.99 million USD, and the property title was registered under both husband and wife.

On April 24, Dong Qing responded for the first time. The Cover News contacted a friend of hers, a host in Beijing. This friend said that Dong Qing had been in Shanghai taking care of her mother and had returned to work in Beijing a few days ago, and that everything was fine. Many people took this as an excuse, but six years later, her father's obituary revealed to the outside world that this was the truth. Not long after the spotlight faded, on August 12, overseas media reported that three months after Sun Lijun fell from power, Dong Qing and News Broadcast (Xinwen Lianbo) anchor Ouyang Xiadan were taken away by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) within two days of each other. This time, the person said to be implicated was not Li Sisi. A week later, on August 19, CCTV recorded a program called "The Most Lovable People in the New Era," and Dong Qing appeared in the group photo of the cast and crew. Hong Kong media took this photo as a refutation of the rumors. Ouyang Xiadan did not have such a photo to refute the rumors; she last hosted "News Broadcast" on April 28, 2020, and has not appeared on CCTV since. In October of that year, Japan's Sankei Shimbun cited sources saying that the authorities were investigating the relationship between Ouyang Xiadan and Sun Lijun. In June 2023, CCTV updated its list of hosts, and Ouyang Xiadan's name was deleted. Two female anchors, both rumored to have had relations with Sun Lijun—one disappeared forever, while the other continued to appear on programs. The outside world could find no information on how Dong Qing passed this hurdle. What could be seen was how she looked after passing it.

From October 16 to 18, 2020, the third season of "The Reader" opened in a way never seen before: small reading booths were set up in Beijing, Wuhan, and Xiamen, broadcasting non-stop for 72 hours. Ordinary people walked in and read a piece of text they wanted to read in front of the camera. The producer, general director, and host of this live broadcast were all Dong Qing. As the broadcast was nearing its end, it was already early morning. She sat on the streets of Beijing with several observers, read a piece of text together, and said goodbye to the audience. At this time, it had only been half a year since Sun Lijun fell from power and only two months since rumors spread overseas that she had been taken away by the CCDI. CCTV letting her take charge of such a large project was equivalent to telling the outside world that Dong Qing was fine. On September 30, 2021, the CCDI announced the "double expulsion" notice for Sun Lijun. The severity of the language used in the notice was rare since the 18th National Congress. There were two sentences in it that can be read out as they are. One is: "Having no moral bottom line, engaging in power-for-sex and money-for-sex deals." The other is: "Long-term arrangement for private business owners to rent high-end apartments for his use." The notice did not state which woman or which private business owner was involved. More than a month later, on November 4, the "China Real Estate Business" newspaper, supervised by the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, published a long article titled "Mysterious Tycoon Mi Chunlei and His Capital Game," which turned over the background of Dong Qing's husband once again. The next day, the Supreme People's Procuratorate announced the decision to arrest Sun Lijun on suspicion of bribery. The state media's exposé on Mi Chunlei and the approval of Sun Lijun's arrest were only one day apart.

On January 23, 2022, CCTV aired an episode of "The Reader" hosted by Dong Qing. After this episode aired, Dong Qing never appeared on a major CCTV program again. By this time, her husband had been missing for nearly a month. When Sun Lijun fell, she passed the hurdle; after her husband was taken away, her program was stopped. Caixin later reported that at the end of December 2021, Mi Chunlei was taken away by the economic investigation department of the local police. About two weeks later, Zhang Xilin, the investment director of Shanghai Life Insurance, was also taken away for investigation. On January 29, the listed company under Mi Chunlei's name issued an announcement. This company was formerly known as COSCO Shipping Specialized Carriers and had been renamed Landsea Medicine. The announcement stated that it had received written authorization from Chairman Mi Chunlei for a director to perform his duties on his behalf for three months. Three months passed, and the person did not return. On April 27, the company replied to the Shanghai Stock Exchange, saying that it had repeatedly verified the situation with Mi Chunlei's family and had not obtained any information that should be disclosed.

During the time Mi Chunlei was missing, there was a change in Sun Lijun's case. On January 13, 2022, the Supreme People's Procuratorate announced that the Sun Lijun case had been prosecuted at the Changchun Intermediate People's Court. When his arrest was approved, his charges only included bribery. By the time of prosecution, two more charges were added: manipulating the securities market and illegal possession of firearms. The announcement also stated that this case was investigated and concluded separately by the National Supervisory Commission and the Changchun Public Security Bureau of Jilin Province. In the case of a Vice Minister of Public Security, a municipal-level public security bureau appeared among the investigating units. Gao Xin said that the local economic investigation unit that took Mi Chunlei away was the Changchun Public Security Bureau. According to him, the CCDI special case team could not break through Mi Chunlei, so they let the Changchun police step in and take the person away in the name of supplementary investigation. One of the main contents of Sun Lijun's charge of manipulating the securities market was related to Mi Chunlei.

When her husband went missing, trouble struck her home in Shanghai again. In March 2022, her mother's cancer recurred and metastasized. At seventy-four, she underwent another major surgery, followed by over a dozen rounds of chemotherapy, with the hospital issuing three critical condition notices. At her lowest points, her mother said several times that she did not want to continue treatment and did not want to be a burden on the family. Her father persuaded her, saying that Qingqing could not lose her mother, and her grandson could not lose his grandmother. On July 7, Mi Chunlei returned and resumed his duties as Chairman of LonH Medical, having been out of contact for 158 days. The next day, July 8, the first instance trial of the Sun Lijun case opened at the Changchun Intermediate People's Court, where Sun Lijun pleaded guilty and expressed remorse in court. On September 23, the verdict was announced: Sun Lijun was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve for accepting bribes of over 646 million yuan, to be commuted to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole or commutation after the reprieve expires. He was also sentenced to eight years for manipulating the securities market and five years for illegal possession of firearms. The verdict also noted that after being brought to justice, Sun Lijun provided clues to other major cases, which were verified as true, constituting a major meritorious service. Mi Chunlei was not prosecuted, but while he returned, his business did not recover. In July of that year, LonH Medical was delisted. The following year, the court issued a restriction on consumption order against him, requested by a subsidiary of the state-owned enterprise that had sold the listed company shell to him years prior. In August 2023, a working group from China Pacific Insurance, appointed by the Shanghai Municipal Government, moved into Shanghai Life Insurance. In December 2025, led by Pudong Development Bank, several Shanghai state-owned enterprises provided a total of 10.6 billion yuan to take over all assets and liabilities of Shanghai Life Insurance. To this day, there are still 59 restriction on consumption orders under Mi Chunlei's name.

In the early hours of March 7, 2026, Dong Qing's mother passed away; Jin Lude was seventy-eight years old. From the time she was diagnosed with late-stage ovarian cancer until her death, she held on for six and a half years. When her mother passed, no obituary was published. More than three months later, on June 26, Dong Qing's father, Dong Shanxiang, published a eulogy of over 3,000 words under the pen name Qin Shiyue in the supplement of the Jiaxing Daily, where he worked before retirement, titled "My Wife Lude." The eulogy was filled with the mundane details of their life together; he wrote that they had accompanied each other from youth to middle age, and then to old age. He wrote, "If your soul survives, I hope you will often come home to visit." The entire piece did not mention the name Dong Qing, nor did it mention her son-in-law once.

Three months later, Dong Qing wanted to return to the stage. In late September, the Beijing Broadcasting Network announced the guest list for a Mid-Autumn Poetry Gala, co-hosted by the Haidian District Culture and Tourism Bureau and the National Library, held at the National Library Arts Center. The list included Zhu Jun, Chen Duo, Xue Fei, and Zhang Kaili, as well as Dong Qing. She was to recite an essay written by her old colleague Jing Yidan, titled "Moonlight Before the Bed." On the evening of September 24, the program had already been printed and distributed to the audience; item 11 read: Recitation of "Moonlight Before the Bed," author Jing Yidan, reciter Dong Qing. Dong Qing herself had arrived in Beijing, but before the show began, her posters at the venue were taken down. When it came to the 11th program, a robot walked onto the stage. There are two versions of the reason: some audience members at the scene relayed that staff said Dong Qing had a poor public image and could not be allowed on stage, while the organizers claimed that Dong Qing's schedule was canceled at the last minute. To this day, no party has issued a written statement. The next day, the news of Dong Qing's program being canceled trended on Weibo, and someone spotted her at Beijing Airport, preparing to fly back to Shanghai. Five days later, on September 30, Mi Chunlei stepped down as Chairman of Shanghai Life Insurance. On October 3, during the National Day holiday, tourists spotted Dong Qing's family at the National Art Museum of China in Beijing. Dong Qing was accompanying her father to look at paintings, her son was standing nearby, and Mi Chunlei was following behind. This was the first time in many years that the couple had been photographed together.

In 1998, twenty-five-year-old Dong Qing left a boyfriend who could not help her; according to overseas reports, this man later became a Vice Minister of Public Security. In 2014, in her early forties, Dong Qing married a Shanghai businessman who allegedly rose to power through him; this man was Mi Chunlei. Her mother once said she hoped there would still be someone in this world who loved her as her parents did. After her mother passed, her father wrote over 3,000 words for her, without writing the name of his son-in-law. During the years those two men were in power, she stood on the brightest stage in the country. By the time one was sentenced to life imprisonment and the other was saddled with 59 restriction on consumption orders, she had also disappeared from that stage. That is all for today. If you found this episode valuable, please like, hit the notification bell, and share. You are also welcome to subscribe to this channel. Friends who are able to can join as members to support our small channel. I am Yao Yao Jiang, who loves to think and values logic. See you next time.