China Ousts Two Ex-Defense Ministers from Party on Graft

Li Shangfu, right.

(Bloomberg) -- China’s ruling Communist Party expelled two former defense ministers on corruption charges, ending speculation over their fate after a spate of purges rocked the defense hierarchy.

The 24-man Politburo made the decision to oust Li Shangfu and his predecessor Wei Fenghe at a meeting on Thursday, according to state television. Both men took bribes, failed to cooperate with investigations and set a bad example, according to the report.

Wei, who “accepted huge sums of money,” served as defense minister from 2018 to 2023 before being replaced by Li, who was abruptly fired in October after just seven months in the job — becoming the nation’s shortest-serving defense minister.

“Li Shangfu, as a senior leading cadre of the party and the army, abandoned his original mission and party principles,” China Central Television said. His behavior “seriously contaminated the political ecology of the army’s equipment field and the moral fiber of the industry,” it added. Li had previously worked in the equipment procurement department.

President Xi Jinping’s government has unseated at least 16 senior military figures since opening a corruption investigation last summer into hardware purchases going back to 2017. Several of those officials, including Wei, have ties to the secretive Rocket Force that the top Chinese leader revamped in 2015.

US intelligence experts viewed the purges as a response to the discovery of widespread corruption in the military, including in the unit that manages the country’s expanding nuclear arsenal and would be critical to any invasion of Taiwan.

“This is a bad look for Xi, who otherwise has had success in modernizing the PLA,” said Joel Wuthnow, a senior research fellow at the National Defense University’s Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs. “At a minimum, he can’t trust some of his own senior generals, and at worst he may lack confidence in critical PLA equipment.”

Read More on China’s Military Purges:

Li’s downfall was part of the largest shakeup to Xi’s cabinet in years. Former Foreign Minister Qin Gang was sacked without explanation last year and hasn’t been seen in public since, while former Agriculture Minister Tang Renjian was probed in May.

The investigation into Li also made him the most senior official ensnared in Xi’s anti-graft push in more than six years. The last official of his level to be probed for corruption was Yang Jing, who was dismissed in 2018 as state councilor and secretary-general of the State Council.

China’s military has recently amended its audit rules to step up scrutiny over its budget, resources and assets, Defense Ministry spokesman Wu Qian said at a press briefing Thursday.

Wei’s fate sparked discussion when his name was missing from a list of retired cadres who received greetings from the top leadership in February. He was put under probe in September last year, according to state media, about one month after Li, who is accused of bribing other people.

Li’s expulsion likely opens up his spot on the party’s top military decision-making and commanding body, which is chaired by Xi. His replacement on the Central Military Commission could be announced at a long-delayed party conclave of senior officials next month.

China’s most-powerful leader since Mao Zedong has spent the past decade trying to reform the nation’s military and root out corruption from its ranks. The ongoing purges show those efforts are still not complete.

In a Politburo study session on Thursday afternoon, Xi also vowed to “improve” the mechanism for strict management and supervision of party cadres to enforce discipline, according to the official Xinhua News Agency.

--With assistance from James Mayger.

(Updates with Politburo study session in last paragraph.)

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