He was the first vice ministerial-level official in Nanjing to be targeted by anti-corruption authorities since 2008, before Yang Weize, Ji Jianye, Miao Ruilin, and Zhang Jinghua.
After university, he met the Cultural Revolution and became a sent-down youth at Red Flag Farm in August 1968.
He became mayor of Nanjing, capital of Jiangsu province, in March 1994, and then party secretary, the top political position in the city, beginning in June 1995.
During his tenure as mayor, he ordered relevant departments to cut down the street trees on the main roads of Nanjing in order to make the city brighter, which was opposed by the media and the Nanjing people jokingly called him "Mayor of Cutting Trees" (砍树市长).
[4] On 31 January 2008, he was sentenced to death by the Intermediate People's Court of Hefei for bribery, suspended for two years, deprived him of political rights for life, and confiscated all his personal property.