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Former Chinese defence minister Li Shangfu was dismissed last year. Photo: EPA-EFE

In a first, China accuses former defence ministers Li Shangfu and Wei Fenghe of corruption

  • Both men have also been expelled from the Communist Party in an unprecedented Politburo announcement

In an unprecedented move, Beijing has announced corruption investigations into two former defence ministers.

Wei Fenghe and his successor Li Shangfu have also been expelled from the Communist Party, state news agency Xinhua reported, following a meeting on Thursday of the party’s 24-man Politburo.
The announcement comes months after the abrupt dismissal of Li, China’s shortest-serving defence minister. Li was sacked from his job in October, just seven months after he became defence minister. Wei held the position from 2018 to 2023.

Earlier meetings of the Central Military Commission (CMC), the country’s top military decision-making body, also stripped Li and Wei of their positions as generals and membership of the People’s Liberation Army, it added.

The investigation into Li began on August 31 and concluded that he had accepted “large sums of money” to seek benefits for others. He had also bribed others, according to the statement.

Wei came under investigation on September 21 and is accused of accepting unauthorised gifts and large amounts of money in exchange for using his power to obtain benefits for others. He is not accused of taking bribes.

The investigations also uncovered evidence of other possible “serious disciplinary and criminal offences” by the two men, the statement added, without giving details.

Both men will face criminal prosecution, according to the Xinhua report.

01:54

China sacks defence minister Li Shangfu with no explanation after nearly two-month absence

China sacks defence minister Li Shangfu with no explanation after nearly two-month absence

It is the first time in the history of the People’s Liberation Army that corruption investigations into two defence ministers have been made public on the same day.

The military is a major target of President Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign, and Beijing has said proudly that more Chinese generals have fallen in the campaign than were killed in decades of war in the 20th century.

Chinese defence ministers play a different role to the foreign counterparts. They are mostly military diplomats who have very limited command power and have a low rank in the party’s Central Military Commission, headed by Xi.

Xi has gone after bigger military figures before, with two former vice-chairman of the commission under his predecessor – Xu Caihou and Guo Boxiong – sacked for corruption.

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Thursday’s report used unusually harsh language about the two generals.

Wei, a senior party and PLA leader, had “a collapse of faith and a loss of loyalty” and “seriously polluted the political ecosystem of the PLA”. Meanwhile, Li had “abandoned the original mission and lost the principles of the party” and seriously contaminated the PLA’s military equipment industry.

Their actions “betrayed the trust of the party’s central leadership and the CMC … and caused great damage to the party’s cause, national defence and the construction of the PLA, as well as to the image of the senior leading cadres”, it said.

“It was of an extremely serious nature, with an extremely bad impact and extremely great harm,” the report said.

Li and Wei are just the latest senior PLA officers to be brought down in the ongoing anti-graft campaign. Nine generals, including previous and serving commanders from the PLA Rocket Force and the air force as well as a number of CMC officials with the Equipment Development Department, were dismissed from the National People’s Congress in December.

Li spent decades in the equipment department, which oversees military procurement.

Wei took the helm of the PLA’s Second Artillery Corps in 2012 and continued to lead this key part of the country’s nuclear arsenal after it was restructured to become the rocket force in 2015.

The report did not mention Qin Gang, who was removed as foreign minister last year. Qin, China’s shortest-serving foreign minister, disappeared in June 2023 before being stripped of his remaining titles in the government.
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