China delivers its harshest military corruption sentences in years

Following a 22-month judicial review, the verdicts for China’s two former state councillors and defence ministers, Wei Fenghe and Li Shangfu, have finally been delivered.

State media outlet Xinhua reported that on 7 May, a military court sentenced Wei and Li to death with a two-year reprieve in the first-instance trial. Both had all personal assets confiscated. After the reprieve, the sentences are expected to be commuted to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole or sentence reduction, meaning they will likely spend the rest of their lives in prison.

Wei was convicted of accepting bribes, while Li was found guilty of “accepting and offering bribes, with combined punishment for multiple offences”. These charges are consistent with those announced by the authorities in June 2024, when the two men were expelled from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and the military and transferred to military prosecutors. 

However, unlike sentencing disclosures in cases involving civilian officials, the authorities did not reveal the value of the bribes involved, nor did they provide further details of their offences.

In recent years, China’s anti-corruption campaign has intensified, with investigations into the defence industry and senior military officers proving particularly striking.

Courts have also shown little leniency in sentencing severely corrupt officials. In 2025 alone, several senior non-military officials received suspended death sentences in first-instance trials, including former vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of the Hunan Provincial People’s Congress Peng Guofu; former vice-chairman of the Hunan Provincial Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) Dai Daojin; former Guangxi vice-chairman Qin Rupei; former Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs Tang Renjian; and former vice-chairman of the Guizhou Provincial Committee of the CPPCC Chen Yan.

The amounts involved in their corruption and bribery cases were enormous — at least over 100 million RMB (US$14.7 million), and in some cases as high as 200 to 300 million RMB.

Suspended death sentences and life imprisonment for major corrupt officials are also not uncommon. Examples include former deputy secretary of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Regional Committee of the CCP Li Pengxin, who accepted 800 million RMB in bribes; former vice-chairman of the Standing Committee of the People’s Congress of Inner Mongolia autonomous region Wang Bo, who accepted 450 million RMB; former deputy party chief and deputy director of the Standing Committee of the Qingdao People’s Congress Zhang Xijun; and former sports administration chief Gou Zhongwen.

However, according to public information, there have been very few cases of senior People’s Liberation Army (PLA) generals receiving suspended death sentences or life imprisonment for massive corruption.

The most notable case from around the past decade is that of former PLA Logistics Department deputy head Lieutenant General Gu Junshan, who received a suspended death sentence in 2015. At the time, however, China’s Criminal Law had not yet introduced the provision of life imprisonment without commutation for corruption and bribery offences.

In July 2016, former Central Military Commission (CMC) vice-chairman Guo Boxiong was sentenced to life imprisonment after retirement; while in February 2019, former Joint Staff Department chief Fang Fenghui was also sentenced to life imprisonment. Against this backdrop, the suspended death sentences and life imprisonment handed to Wei Fenghe and Li Shangfu are unusually severe.

Part of the reason they received heavy sentences can be found in the CMC reports on the investigations and disciplinary recommendations concerning Wei and Li, which were reviewed and approved by the CCP Politburo in June 2024.

The reports accused Wei of “losing his faith and loyalty… severely contaminating the political environment of the military”, while Li was said to have “betrayed the party’s original aspiration and its principles… severely contaminated the political environment of the equipment sector in the military and the ethics of relevant industries”. The severity of the measures clearly reflected the top leadership’s fury at their actions.

The authorities’ decision to announce the sentence of the two men on the same day implicitly suggested a connection between the cases, pointing to a possible bribery relationship between Wei and Li. The two reports also revealed that both had “resisted organisational investigation”, meaning they failed to give truthful accounts, such as by implicating each other or other individuals involved in the case. This was likely another reason for the heavy sentences imposed by the court.

Notably, Xinhua’s reports did not mention whether either person accepted the verdict or intended to appeal. By contrast, reports on the 2016 sentencing of Guo Boxiong stated that the military court said Guo had expressed in court his acceptance of the judgment and that he would not appeal.

Wei and Li were the earliest vice-state-level senior military officials to fall from power after the CCP’s 20th Party Congress in 2022. Li had served for many years within the PLA’s equipment system. After being elected a member of the CMC in 2022, he became state councillor and defence minister in March 2023, only to be removed from both posts by the National People’s Congress seven months later, in late October. During that period, Li disappeared from public view after 29 August. 

Around July that same year, the PLA Rocket Force leadership had already been overhauled in a major purge, and Wei — the Rocket Force’s inaugural commander — was placed under investigation on 21 September 2023.

Meanwhile, large numbers of senior figures from the military-industrial sector linked to equipment procurement came under investigation, and the anti-corruption campaign soon spread to almost every branch of the PLA. By November 2024, CMC member and director of the Political Work Department Admiral Miao Hua, had been suspended over suspected serious disciplinary violations. 

This was followed by the successive downfalls of the two CMC vice-chairmen, He Weidong and Zhang Youxia, as well as CMC member Liu Zhenli. Of the seven-member CMC formed after the CCP’s 20th Party Congress, five have now fallen, leaving only CMC Chairman Xi Jinping and Zhang Shengmin, who was added as vice-chairman last year.

With the sentencing of Wei and Li, other vice state-level senior military officers who have fallen from power are also likely to enter the judicial trial stage. However, judging by the length of time taken in the Wei and Li cases, Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli — who only fell from power earlier this year — are unlikely to face first-instance court hearings anytime soon.

What is clear, though, is that the harsh sentences imposed on Wei and Li — life imprisonment without the possibility of sentence reduction or parole — serve as a stark warning to other senior military officials about the severe consequences of “resisting organisational investigation”. Whether the others accept their verdicts will also be a point of external scrutiny.

After the major reshuffle within the military, the party leadership will inevitably carry out a thorough investigation into whether there are still individuals within the military harbouring divided loyalties. It will also assess whether commanders, along with the strikingly advanced weapons systems fielded in recent years, would in fact be willing and capable of going into battle when required.

This article was first published in Lianhe Zaobao as “魏凤和李尚福被重判死缓终身监禁”.

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