The Egg Seller and the Minister: High-Speed Corruption

Ding Shumiao, a semi-literate former egg seller from Shanxi, rose to become a billionaire "white glove" for China's former Minister of Railways, Liu Zhijun, by using her talent for social networking to manage his private affairs and political bribes. Leveraging Liu’s immense power, she illegally brokered over 180 billion RMB in high-speed rail contracts and monopolized key industries like rail wheel supplies and station advertising, earning billions in personal profit. Their corruption empire collapsed following a 2009 audit irregularity, resulting in Liu's arrest and Ding receiving a record-breaking 2.5 billion RMB fine alongside her prison sentence.