Two former Chinese defense ministers have received death sentences with two years’ reprieve — meaning they will probably spend the rest of their lives in prison — after being convicted on bribery charges, military courts announced on Thursday.
The two men, both generals, are the most senior officers so far to have been publicly sentenced in China’s latest campaign to root out corruption and disloyalty in the armed forces.
A brief report from the official Chinese news agency Xinhua said that one of the two former ministers, Gen. Wei Fenghe, had taken bribes, while the other, Gen. Li Shangfu, had both taken and given bribes. The announcement gave no further details about the allegations. In China, judges usually reduce death sentences with two years’ reprieve to life in prison if those convicted demonstrate good behavior.
The two generals were among the first senior officers to be removed from their posts and arrested as the latest drive by Xi Jinping, China’s leader, to clean up the military’s top brass was gaining momentum a few years ago. Since then, around 100 senior officers have been dismissed or have disappeared from public view, suggesting that they are under investigation, according to a recent estimate from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a research group in Washington.
At a meeting last month, Mr. Xi indicated that his anticorruption campaign would continue, Chinese official media reported.
Analysts said the sentences handed down to General Wei and General Li would serve as a warning to others in the military about Mr. Xi’s determination to continue with the shake-up, even though it has severely depleted his high command. Mr. Xi’s recent comments suggested that he sees corruption and disloyalty in the military as related threats, because the temptations of self-enrichment also weaken officers’ fealty to the Communist Party and to Mr. Xi.
“Charges like this can be about real corruption and also a political tactic,” said Andrew Nien-Dzu Yang, an expert on the Chinese military who formerly served in Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense.
“Putting these two senior military leaders under a suspended sentence to death can be used to justify the tightening control of the armed forces under Xi Jinping,” Mr. Yang added.
General Li was appointed defense minister in March 2023, but months later, he stopped carrying out his normal public activities and was then dismissed from his post. The following year, Communist Party investigators accused him and General Wei, who had been the defense minister from 2018 to 2023, of taking large bribes, trading in military promotions and compromising weapons production with their corruption.
In China, the post of defense minister is a relatively weak one, because the real power lies in the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party, under Mr. Xi’s command. The accusations against the two former ministers may date to their earlier careers, including when they commanded military units that spent large amounts of money.
General Li, 68, rose through the ranks in rocket and weapons development, as well as in China’s manned space program. He was a deputy commander of the Strategic Support Force, which Mr. Xi created in late 2015 as part of a reorganization of the Chinese military. General Wei, 72, was the first commander of the Rocket Force, which oversees most of China’s nuclear missiles as well as thousands of conventional ones.
Since the two former ministers’ downfall, many more senior Chinese commanders have been dismissed and investigated. In January, the most senior full-time officer in the People’s Liberation Army, Gen. Zhang Youxia, was placed under investigation, along with a deputy.
General Zhang and the deputy had both been members of the Central Military Commission, which has shrunk from seven members in 2022 to just two: the chairman, Mr. Xi, and Gen. Zhang Shengmin, who has been the top anticorruption investigator in the military.
“All this really creates a tense atmosphere in the Chinese military,” said Mr. Yang, the military expert.
