Bai Baoshan was born in 1958 in Hebei and had served a long prison sentence for theft, during which, by his own account, he decided that he would take revenge on society when he came out.
Between 1996 and 1997 he shot fourteen people across Xinjiang, Hebei and Beijing. Most were police officers, armed guards and security personnel, killed specifically to take their firearms, and he used the weapons in a series of armed robberies of banks and gold shops. Civilians who were in the way, including a shop assistant and passers-by, were also shot. He worked latterly with a small group including his girlfriend.
He was arrested in Beijing on October 16, 1997 after a robbery in Shijiazhuang.
He was tried, convicted and executed by a shot to the head on May 6, 1998, under seven months after his arrest. Chinese state television broadcast footage of him being taken to the execution ground, which was itself widely commented on outside China. The case was used domestically in the campaign against violent crime of that period.