{"id":12488,"date":"2026-05-07T18:15:55","date_gmt":"2026-05-07T18:15:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/2026\/05\/07\/china-two-former-defense-ministers-death-sentence-corruption\/"},"modified":"2026-05-07T18:15:55","modified_gmt":"2026-05-07T18:15:55","slug":"china-two-former-defense-ministers-death-sentence-corruption","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/2026\/05\/07\/china-two-former-defense-ministers-death-sentence-corruption\/","title":{"rendered":"Two Former Chinese Defense Ministers Sentenced to Death with Two-Year Reprieve Over Corruption"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Chinese state media Xinhua has reported that Wei Fenghe and Li Shangfu, two former defense ministers of China, have been sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve on charges of financial corruption. This ruling comes as preparations continue for U.S. President Donald Trump&#8217;s visit to Beijing.<\/p>\n<p>According to the report, both former officials were expelled from the ruling Communist Party of China in 2024. Party authorities at the time cited &#8220;serious violations of discipline,&#8221; a term commonly used in Chinese political discourse to refer to corruption-related offenses.<\/p>\n<p>China&#8217;s anti-corruption campaign has been vigorously pursued by the country&#8217;s leadership in recent years, covering numerous high-ranking party and military officials. The sentencing of two former defense ministers represents one of the most prominent cases within this context.<\/p>\n<p>Under Chinese law, a death sentence with a two-year reprieve typically converts to a life sentence if the convicted individual commits no new crimes during that period. Moreover, if the individual&#8217;s behavior is evaluated positively, further sentence reductions are possible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two former Chinese defense ministers were sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve for corruption amid ongoing preparations for President Trump&#8217;s Beijing visit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12487,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-important-news","category-international"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12487"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/atlaspress.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}