China sentences former defense ministers to death in graft crackdown

The sentences handed to Wei Fenghe and Li Shangfu show that Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption drive inside the military is not only about clean governance. It is also a warning that the People’s Liberation Army remains under intense political discipline, with the highest ranks still vulnerable to purge.

Xinhua said China’s military court handed down separate death sentences with a two-year reprieve to the two former defense ministers over graft charges. Wei was found guilty of accepting bribes. Li was found guilty of both accepting and offering bribes. In China, a suspended death sentence is commonly held for two years and can later be commuted, often to life imprisonment if no further crimes are committed.

The punishment was striking because both men once occupied some of the most sensitive posts in China’s defense establishment. Wei served as defense minister from 2018 to 2023. Li held the job briefly in 2023 before disappearing from public view amid scrutiny. Both were expelled from the Communist Party in 2024 for what Beijing called “serious violations of discipline,” language routinely used by Chinese authorities in corruption cases.

Their fall reaches beyond two individual prosecutions. Xi launched the broad anti-corruption campaign after taking power in 2012, and the armed forces have long been one of its main targets. The military is central to Xi’s authority as chairman of the Central Military Commission, and repeated removals at the top suggest that the campaign has become a tool not only for rooting out graft but for tightening control over promotions, procurement and loyalty inside the PLA.

The scale of the case makes it unusually consequential even by China’s anti-graft standards. Reports described the punishments as among the harshest imposed on senior military officials under Xi. Sentencing two former defense ministers in one proceeding sends a clear message to the upper ranks of the security establishment that elite status offers no protection once discipline collapses in Beijing’s view.

The ruling also feeds a wider picture of internal pressure inside China’s defense apparatus at a time when the country faces close scrutiny over military readiness and governance. For Beijing, the case reinforces the claim that corruption threatens command discipline and combat effectiveness. At the same time, the repeated purges at the top show a defense system still struggling to project stability while Xi continues to remake it from within.