From release to a multi-region crime series
Bai Baoshan had served a lengthy prison sentence for earlier property and assault offenses. China.org.cn records that he was released one year early in 1996. During the following 17 months, investigators connected him to a succession of armed robberies, attacks and killings in Beijing, Hebei and Xinjiang.
The crimes included attacks on soldiers, police officers and civilians. This page deliberately avoids weapon specifications or operational details that are unnecessary to understand the investigation. What matters editorially is the pattern: violence was used to obtain property, money and access to weapons, and the series crossed jurisdictional boundaries.
The Xinjiang cases
The investigation became especially urgent after a sequence of violent crimes in Xinjiang in 1997. On August 19, 1997, Bai and accomplice Wu Ziming carried out a major robbery at a commercial area in Urumqi. China.org.cn reports that 1.4 million yuan was stolen and seven people were killed.
Chinese retrospective accounts also identify Wu as a later victim of Bai. Because sources differ over whether that death and two prison-era killings should be folded into the headline victim total, Crime by Region keeps the 15-death figure attached specifically to the documented 1996–97 series rather than presenting a higher number as universally settled.
Cross-regional investigation
Police in Beijing, Hebei and Xinjiang compared the pattern of the crimes and shared investigative information. Retrospective Chinese reporting describes the case as a major national investigation linking incidents that had initially occurred in separate jurisdictions.
By early September 1997, investigators had focused on Bai. On September 5, police detained him in Beijing. The arrest ended the active series, and subsequent questioning and evidence collection were used to consolidate cases from the different regions.
Trial and conviction
On March 3, 1998, proceedings opened in the Urumqi Intermediate People's Court. Chinese retrospective accounts state that the court examined a series of offenses committed across Beijing, Hebei and Xinjiang and convicted Bai of intentional homicide, robbery-related offenses and crimes involving the seizure of firearms.
He received a death sentence and permanent deprivation of political rights. Reporting from the period and later retrospectives state that the judgment was approved through the required higher-court review process.
Execution
Bai Baoshan was executed in Xinjiang in April 1998. The judicial process therefore ended with a final conviction and carried-out sentence.
Although later popular retellings sometimes turn the case into a story about the offender's notoriety, the underlying record is a series of robberies and killings that left numerous victims across several regions. This archive treats those deaths and injuries as the central fact of the case rather than as supporting details in a criminal biography.
Timeline
March 1996: Bai is released from prison; the later-linked violent crime series begins that year.
1996–1997: robberies, attacks and killings occur across Beijing, Hebei and Xinjiang.
August 19, 1997: seven people are killed during a major robbery in Urumqi, according to China.org.cn.
September 5, 1997: police detain Bai in Beijing.
March 3, 1998: the Urumqi Intermediate People's Court hears the case and sentences Bai to death.
April 1998: the sentence is carried out after judicial review.
Current status
The case is solved and adjudicated. Bai Baoshan was arrested, convicted and executed. The remaining uncertainty is not about the identity of the principal offender or the legal outcome, but about how retrospective sources aggregate several distinct categories of deaths when describing his overall victim count.