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File photo of Wang Zhenhua taken on July 7, 2018. /VCG
A five-year prison sentence was given to Chinese property billionaire Wang Zhenhua for child molestation by a local court on Wednesday. The verdict triggered a second wave of nationwide outrage since the case first gained public attention 11 months ago.
According to Shanghai police, in June 2019, officers received a report from a mother saying her daughter was brought to Shanghai by her friend Zhou Yanfen, 49. Upon arriving, the girl was taken to a hotel room and molested by a man there. Zhou and the 58-year-old Wang were quickly identified and subsequently detained by the police.
Besides the 9-year-old daughter, Zhou also brought another 12-year-old girl to the hotel. Zhou told the mother that she would take the girls to visit the Shanghai Disneyland Resort. Zhou was sentenced to four years behind bars for child molestation in the same trial. The trial was not open to the public because it involved minors.
The verdict has been trending on Weibo, China's Twitter-like social media platform, since it was announced. The case gained 170 million views under one hashtag alone. Current affairs magazine Phoenix Weekly conducted a poll on the case, and within one hour more than 92 percent of its 10,000 respondents considered the ruling too light.
Under Chinese criminal laws, sexual molestation of children carries a maximum prison term of five years; however, if the sexual molestation is conducted in public, a heavier punishment of more than five years of imprisonment will be given.
Many Weibo users questioned why Wang was not charged with rape, considering the vaginal injuries the girl sustained. Rape of young girls carries a jail term of three to 10 years under the law.
Wang, who holds a net worth of 5.7 billion U.S. dollars and ranks 341st on the global rich list, is the founder and former chairman of local property developer Future Land Development Holdings Ltd. The company has changed its name to Seazen Holdings since Wang's arrest last July.
Stock of Seazen Holdings has crashed by about 26 percent since the arrest, but it jumped 5 percent in Hong Kong on Wednesday.
Another case weighing on the public's nerves concerns Bao Yuming, the former non-executive director of Chinese telecom company ZTE, who was accused of sexually assaulting his foster daughter in April.
