A Chinese military court has sentenced two former defence ministers, Wei Fenghe and Li Shangfu, to death on corruption charges, state news agency Xinhua reported on Thursday. Both men received suspended death sentences with a two-year reprieve — a standard legal mechanism in China whereby, if the convicted person commits no further serious offences during the suspension period, the sentence is automatically commuted to life imprisonment without the possibility of reduction or parole. All personal assets belonging to both men were confiscated, and they were stripped of their civil rights.
Wei, 72, served as defence minister from 2018 to 2023, while Li, 68, replaced him in March 2023 only to be abruptly dismissed that October — two months after he vanished from public life, triggering widespread speculation about his fate. Both men had also sat on the Central Military Commission, the body that oversees China's armed forces, making them among the most senior figures ever caught up in the country's anti-corruption drive. Investigators found that Wei had accepted "a huge amount of money and valuables" in bribes and helped others gain improper benefits. Li was found guilty of both accepting and offering bribes, and was also found to have failed to fulfil his political responsibilities and to have sought personal gain for himself and others.
The sentences are the harshest handed down to senior military officials since President Xi Jinping launched his anti-corruption campaign within the People's Liberation Army — the military arm of the Chinese Communist Party — after coming to power in late 2012. The purges have hit particularly hard in the People's Liberation Army Rocket Force, which controls China's nuclear arsenal and conventional missiles, as well as in military equipment procurement, where Li had spent decades before becoming minister. Earlier this year, the campaign claimed further senior figures, including General Zhang Youxia, long regarded as one of the PLA's most powerful figures.
The convictions underscore the sweeping scale of Xi's military reorganisation, but they also draw scrutiny from China analysts who note that corruption charges in China are frequently used as a tool to remove political rivals and consolidate control within the system. Xi himself made a rare public acknowledgement of the military purges earlier this year, stating that the army had "undergone revolutionary tempering in the fight against corruption." Whether the crackdown will ultimately strengthen military cohesion or deepen uncertainty within the ranks remains a subject of debate among outside observers.