China has sentenced a former property executive who once called President Xi Jinping "a clown" to 18 years in prison for graft, a court said on Tuesday, in what some critics called an especially harsh sentence amid an ongoing clampdown on dissent.
Ren Zhiqiang, the former chairman of Huayuan, a state-owned real estate group, had publicly criticised the country's president over China's efforts to battle coronavirus.He was convicted for illegal gains totalling 112 million yuan ($16.5 million), according to a notice on the website of Beijing No.