Two former Chinese defence ministers have been handed suspended death sentences on corruption charges, according to state media.<\/p>\n
A military court on Thursday sentenced Wei Fenghe and Li Shangfu to death with a two-year reprieve. This means their death sentences will be commuted to life imprisonment after two years, without the possibility of sentence reduction or parole, Xinhua reports.<\/p>\n
Both men were both found guilty of bribery, and all of their personal assets were confiscated.<\/p>\n
The announcement follows the recent ousting of several top military figures in the country amid a sweeping anti corruption crackdown.<\/p>\n
Wei served as defence minister from 2018 to 2023 and was replaced by Li in March 2023.<\/p>\n
Li\u2019s tenure as defence minister was much shorter.<\/p>\n
He was dismissed in October 2023, two months after he suddenly disappeared from public life, sparking speculation of his removal.<\/p>\n
In February, Chinese president Xi Jinping made a rare public reference to the military crackdown that also recently saw the removal of the country\u2019s top military general Zhang Youxia.<\/p>\n
Xi said at the time that the army had \u201cundergone revolutionary tempering in the fight against corruption\u201d.<\/p>\n
Since coming to power, President Xi has launched waves of anti-corruption drives, which critics say have also been used as a tool to purge political rivals.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Two former Chinese defence ministers have been handed suspended death sentences on corruption charges, according to state media. A military court on Thursday sentenced Wei Fenghe and Li Shangfu to death with a two-year reprieve. This means their death sentences will be commuted to life imprisonment after two years, without the possibility of sentence reduction […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-140134","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140134\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/chezaspin.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}