>And he did this as a public servant for over 30 years.

and it was discovered just now? May it be that he played exactly by the rules, the real rules, of the regime - corruption being among the foundational rules of it - and thus it was going for 30 years? And right now he just got his turn like it usually happens in totalitarian regimes. The regime will for show find an excuse to execute you if you got your turn, corruption is just the easiest one.

Also note that corruption is for the officials, state treason is for regular citizens. Same as in Russia. The regime wouldn't want to create impression of political disunity among the officials.

>Violating the public trust should be extremely harsh.

definitely. The only question why the comrade Xi is still not executed?

Well it isn't much contortionism when you look at the big picture you'll find that corruption is an institution in some countries.

For example, you're making an effort to try legitimize the regime by framing a factual gross illegal conduct as a overarching policy.

But is it like that when you observe the whole structure?

How wealthy are the ruling elites? Or for example, how has IP theft policy changed?

Or we can reframe this: how do we tell the difference between a genuine tackle on corruption, from a weed out of the system with a public display?

You have plenty of cases in other corrupt regimes when they want to seize assets from someone the regime wants to push away: it's corruption.

Which again, they could be very well be corrupt, but they are corrupt because they're part of the regime.

You'll probably say: "Oh but the USS!!!" Yes, there's some level of systemic corruption there, just not an institution - yet!