Chinese Former Defence Ministers Sentenced to Death

Beijing – China has sentenced two former defence ministers to death on corruption charges. The military court handed down the ‘death penalty with a two-year reprieve’ to former defence ministers Wei Fenghe and Li Shangfu on Thursday, according to state-run news agency Xinhua.

According to the BBC, the court convicted Wei Fenghe of taking bribes, while Li Shangfu was found guilty of both taking and giving bribes. However, the bribe amounts have not been made public. A two-sentence Xinhua dispatch stated, “Both Wei and Li were given the death penalty with a two-year reprieve and deprived of political rights for life, with the order to confiscate all their personal assets”.

Under Chinese law, the sentence will not be carried out immediately. Should the convicts commit no further crimes during the two-year period, the punishment will automatically be commuted to life imprisonment. Thereafter, however, they will not be eligible for pardon or parole. This is the harshest punishment in President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign since coming to power in 2012. Xi himself had recently said that the military had “passed a revolutionary temperature in the fight against corruption”.

Notably, the case is seen as part and parcel of the anti-corruption drive that China has pursued for a decade and a half. Li replaced Wei as defence minister in March 2023, with Wei having held the post from 2018 to 2023. But Li was sacked in October of the same year. Both were expelled from the party in 2024 and stripped of all military ranks.