Bai Baoshan was a former prisoner from Beijing who, between March 1996 and August 1997, attacked military and police sentries for their guns and then used those weapons in a series of armed robberies and shootings in Beijing and in Xinjiang, in China's far west. The Paper, a Chinese news outlet, reported in 2019 that in little more than a year he shot dead 15 people, among them soldiers, police officers and civilians, and took property worth more than 1.4 million yuan. When he was arrested in 1997, the South China Morning Post reported that he was accused of killing at least 13 people and injuring 15 others, and that he had confessed.
China's Ministry of Public Security treated the shootings as its top criminal case. The Paper reported that the ministry labeled it the country's number one case of 1996 and ranked it first among China's ten major cases of 1997, and that Interpol listed it as the third most serious case in the world that year. The break in the case came from a ballistics examiner who showed that cartridge cases from Beijing and from Xinjiang had been fired by the same rifle. Bai was executed in April 1998, according to the Hong Kong newspaper Sing Tao Headline.
Sing Tao Headline reported in 2024 that Bai came from a district of Beijing and began stealing in 1982. The two main accounts of his first sentence differ in their details. According to the news weekly Life Week, in an account reprinted by China News Service in 2000, he was 25 when he was sentenced in 1983, during the national "Strike Hard" anticrime campaign, to four years for theft, and was sent to a Beijing prison. Sing Tao Headline describes the 1983 sentence as four years for robbery and theft.
The accounts also differ on how that term grew. Life Week reported that in 1985 a cellmate, who had earned credit by informing on him, told the authorities that Bai had plotted a highway robbery with him, and that Bai was given ten more years. Sing Tao Headline says that while in prison he confessed to other crimes and that his sentences were combined into a single term of 15 years. Both accounts trace his later hatred of society to these years.
While he was in prison, according to Life Week, his wife left him and took their twin children with her. In 1991 his Beijing household registration was canceled, and he was sent to serve the rest of his sentence on a labor farm in Xinjiang.
Life Week reported that Bai spent his time on the Xinjiang farm preparing for what came later. He obtained more than 120 rounds of ammunition from local herders and more than 100 pistol and rifle rounds from other inmates. The magazine also reported that he killed two inmates with whom he had feuded, that he was held for more than three months over their deaths, and that he was released for lack of conclusive evidence. Sing Tao Headline likewise reported that he killed two fellow inmates while serving his sentence. He is not known to have been tried for those two deaths.
In March 1996, Life Week reported, he was released one year before his sentence was due to end. Sing Tao Headline wrote that after his release his dissatisfaction with his life fed a desire for revenge against the police.
On March 31, 1996, Bai attacked a sentry at a power plant in western Beijing and took a semi-automatic rifle, according to both Life Week and Sing Tao Headline. Life Week reported two more attacks of the same kind that spring. On April 7 he took a gun from a guard room at a guarded site in Beijing, and on April 22 he took another from a shooting range in Beijing.
Sing Tao Headline reported that he used the rifle in a number of crimes in which five police officers were killed and eight were injured. The Paper wrote that the series began when he attacked a military sentry and seized a gun. Xinhua, the state news agency, later described the case as one of attacks on soldiers and police, armed robbery and murder, and People's Daily called it the Bai Baoshan case of attacks on soldiers and police.
On December 16, 1996, according to Life Week, Bai carried out an armed robbery in Beijing, taking 60,000 yuan from a woman from another province, and then left the city. That date mattered later: the ballistics work that identified him linked cartridge cases from this Beijing case to cases in Xinjiang.
In July and August 1997, Bai was in Xinjiang. Life Week reported that, in and around Urumqi and a second city in the region, he stole a motorcycle and killed its owner. At the police station of the 149th Regiment, he killed a police sergeant and a security guard and took a Type 54 pistol. At a hotel trade market in Urumqi he robbed two merchants of 1.2 million yuan between them. The magazine put the toll in Xinjiang at seven people killed, the merchants and passers-by among them, and four wounded.
The South China Morning Post reported that Bai was charged with injuring 15 people in all, including bystanders hit during an August robbery at a hotel in Urumqi. Police told the paper that he and a fellow former convict had carried out the 17-month spree together, using stolen military firearms, and that the robberies across Beijing, Hebei and Xinjiang had netted about 1.5 million yuan. Police also said Bai shot his former partner dead in Xinjiang.
Investigators had little to work with. Xinhua reported in 2019 that the scenes in Beijing and Xinjiang had yielded only a few bullets and cartridge cases and no other leads, and that the public was uneasy. The two regions lie more than 3,000 kilometers apart, and no one could say whether the shootings were connected. A deputy inspector at the Ministry of Public Security's criminal evidence identification center told Xinhua that, before the ballistics examiner joined the case, Bai's name had not come into investigators' view.
The first expert examinations pointed the wrong way. According to The Paper and The Beijing News, the casings from Beijing were identified as coming from a Type 81 automatic rifle and those from Xinjiang as coming from a Type 56 rifle. On that basis the two series could not be linked, and the investigation stalled. The Paper reported that the ministry had brought leading investigators from around the country into a special task force, but that similar crimes went on and the suspect could not be identified.
The ministry then sent the examiner to Urumqi. The examiner was one of China's earliest researchers of firearm marks, Xinhua reported in 2021. He was 63 at the time, The Beijing News wrote. Working under a microscope for three days and two nights, he compared 16 bullets in 64 comparisons, plus more than 40 cartridge cases. Xinhua's 2021 account says he studied the cases under changing light until he found faint horizontal lines near the ejector mark on one of them, marks left by a Type 81 rifle. Xinhua reported in 2019 that after three days and two nights of work he concluded that the casings from Beijing and Xinjiang had been fired from the same Type 81 rifle, so that the two sets of cases could be investigated together.
The examiner's finding also gave investigators a profile. Xinhua reported that, on the strength of it, police judged that the attacker was probably a prisoner who had committed crimes in Beijing and had later been sent to serve a sentence in Xinjiang. Bai's background matched that judgment. The Beijing News wrote that the examiner's method became a textbook example of firearm mark identification.
The Paper reported that the examiner's conclusion allowed the task force to link the cases, arrest Bai's accomplices and identify Bai as the principal offender. Life Week reported that his accomplice and a woman described as his mistress were also arrested.
The reported date of the arrest varies. Sing Tao Headline gives September 5, 1997. Life Week, as reprinted by China News Service, gives August 16, 1997. The South China Morning Post said the arrest came as the authorities were preparing for their annual "Winter Action" crackdown on crime. The paper reported that Bai had confessed to shootings and robberies and faced the death penalty.
Bai was executed in April 1998, Sing Tao Headline reported. The court that tried him, the offenses of which he was convicted and the dates of his trial and sentencing have not been reported, nor has what became of his accomplice or of the woman arrested with him.
Chinese official media have returned to the case mainly through the career of the ballistics examiner. In June 2019 Xinhua, People's Daily, The Paper and The Beijing News all cited the Bai Baoshan case among the major cases he had helped to solve. In July 2021, in a report on the examiner as a recipient of the July 1 Medal, Xinhua again described how a single cartridge case had turned the investigation. The examiner's son, The Beijing News reported, left the army the year after the Bai Baoshan case and became a criminal technician himself.
In 2024 Sing Tao Headline included Bai in a list of the ten fiercest bandits since the founding of the People's Republic, describing him as the most intelligent criminal of that whole period.
The number of people killed differs between reports. The South China Morning Post, reporting the arrest, gave at least 13 killed and 15 injured. The Paper, in 2019, gave 15 shot dead. Sing Tao Headline said five police officers were killed and eight injured with the first rifle, without giving an overall figure. Life Week gave seven killed in Xinjiang. These figures cover different periods and categories, and none of them is reported as a court finding.
The two inmate deaths in Xinjiang were reported by Life Week and Sing Tao Headline, but Life Week also reported that Bai was released for lack of conclusive evidence. They remain unproven.
The details of his first sentence differ, as does the reported arrest date. The amount taken also differs: about 1.5 million yuan (South China Morning Post) and more than 1.4 million yuan (The Paper).
1982: Begins stealing, according to Sing Tao Headline.
1983: Sentenced to four years during the "Strike Hard" campaign, for theft (Life Week) or for robbery and theft (Sing Tao Headline).
1985: Given ten more years after a cellmate informs on him (Life Week); Sing Tao Headline says his terms were combined into 15 years.
1991: His Beijing household registration is canceled and he is sent to a labor farm in Xinjiang (Life Week).
March 1996: Released one year early (Life Week).
March 31, 1996: Attacks a sentry at a power plant in western Beijing and takes a semi-automatic rifle.
April 7 and April 22, 1996: Takes two more guns in Beijing (Life Week).
December 16, 1996: Armed robbery in Beijing; 60,000 yuan taken (Life Week).
July and August 1997: Killings and robberies in Xinjiang, including a robbery at a hotel trade market in Urumqi.
1997: The ballistics examiner is sent to Urumqi and links the Beijing and Xinjiang cartridge cases to one Type 81 rifle.
August 16, 1997 (Life Week) or September 5, 1997 (Sing Tao Headline): Arrested.
April 1998: Executed (Sing Tao Headline).
June 2019: Chinese state media cite the case in profiles of the ballistics examiner.
July 2021: The examiner is awarded the July 1 Medal; Xinhua recounts the case.