Beijing\u00a0\u2014\u00a0\n <\/p>\n
\n In a stunning move amid a continued purge of its military, China on Thursday gave two former defense ministers suspended death sentences for corruption.\n <\/p>\n
\n Wei Fenghe and Li Shangfu were both convicted of bribery and given the death penalty with a two-year reprieve by the country\u2019s military court, according to state media. The court announced that the two former generals\u2019 sentences will be commuted to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole after two years.\n <\/p>\n
\n Wei, 72, served as defense minister from 2018 to 2023. Li, 68, succeeded Wei and held the position for less than eight months in 2023. Both men were placed under investigation by the military\u2019s anti-graft arm in 2023.\n <\/p>\n
\n Chinese leader Xi Jinping has taken his purge of the armed forces to the very top, most recently targeting his highest-ranked general with the removal in January of Zhang Youxia, who outranked Wei and Li and once oversaw the military\u2019s day-to-day operations.\n <\/p>\n
\n Xi\u2019s shake-up has cut across a wide swath of China\u2019s 2 million-strong People\u2019s Liberation Army (PLA) \u2013\u2013 with more than 100 officers potentially ousted since 2022.\n <\/p>\n
\n Thirty-six generals and lieutenant generals have been officially purged since 2022, while another 65 officers are listed as missing or potentially purged, according to a report published in February by Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies.\n <\/p>\n
\n When accounting for positions that have been purged more than once, 52% of the PLA\u2019s top leadership positions have been affected, the report found.\n <\/p>\n
\n The sweeping clear-out is part of Xi\u2019s longstanding drive to clean up the PLA as he continues to tighten his grip on power and drives forward a major military modernization.\n <\/p>\n
\n But the scope of this \u201cunprecedented purge\u201d raises questions about the military\u2019s readiness to carry out complex operations, the report\u2019s authors wrote.\n <\/p>\n
\n Following the downfall of Zhang and his lieutenant in January, an editorial published by the official PLA Daily newspaper accused the two former military leaders of undermining Xi\u2019s ultimate authority while also reinforcing Xi\u2019s message of zero-tolerance on corruption.\n <\/p>\n
\n Their investigations will \u201cremove toxic influences\u201d within the PLA and \u201chelp the people\u2019s armed forces undergo a thorough renewal, injecting powerful momentum into the drive to build a strong military\u201d, it said.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Beijing\u00a0\u2014\u00a0 In a stunning move amid a continued purge of its military, China on Thursday gave two former…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":779777,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[50,103],"class_list":{"0":"post-779776","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"tag-news","9":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116533687017906869","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=779776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779776\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/779777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=779776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=779776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=779776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}