Wei Fenghe

Early Life and Second Artillery Career

Wei Fenghe was born in February 1954 in Chiping, Shandong. He enlisted in December 1970 and joined the Communist Party in January 1972. He spent most of his career in the Second Artillery Corps, China's strategic missile force, rising from soldier and squad leader in a signals company of the 813th Regiment of Base 54 through platoon leader and operations staff posts to command of the 813th Brigade from 1994 to 1999, and then serving as deputy chief of staff and chief of staff of Base 54 and commander of Base 53. Along the way he studied at the Second Artillery Academy and the National Defense University, graduating from the latter in joint campaign command.

Wei became deputy chief of staff of the Second Artillery in 2004 and its chief of staff in 2006. In 2010 he was appointed deputy chief of the PLA General Staff, the first Second Artillery officer to hold the post.

First Commander of the Rocket Force

In October 2012 Wei succeeded Jing Zhiyuan as commander of the Second Artillery; the following month he was promoted to general and joined the Central Military Commission at the First Plenum of the 18th Central Committee. When the Second Artillery was reorganised as the PLA Rocket Force at the end of December 2015, he became its first commander. He was an alternate member of the 17th Central Committee and a full member of the 18th and 19th, and was reappointed to the CMC in 2017.

Defence Minister

On 19 March 2018 the First Session of the 13th NPC appointed Wei State Councilor and Minister of National Defense, the first defence minister not drawn from the ground forces. At the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore on 2 June 2019 he defended the government's handling of the 1989 Tiananmen events, saying it had acted decisively to stop the turmoil. In December 2020 Pakistan awarded him the Nishan-e-Imtiaz for promoting Pakistan-China defence cooperation. At the Shangri-La Dialogue in June 2022 he warned that if anyone dared to split Taiwan from China, the PLA would not hesitate to fight. He stepped down in March 2023 and was succeeded by Li Shangfu.

Downfall and Sentence

On 31 August 2023, asked about Wei's whereabouts, defence ministry spokesman Wu Qian said the military would fight every case of corruption and punish every corrupt official. According to a later Party announcement, the CMC Commission for Discipline Inspection and Supervision opened a case against Wei on 21 September 2023.

On 27 June 2024 the Politburo expelled Wei from the Party, ended his status as a delegate to the 20th Party Congress and transferred his suspected crimes to the military procuratorate. The announcement said he had accepted gifts and money in violation of the rules and used his position to benefit others in return for huge sums, constituting suspected bribe-taking, and described him as having suffered "a collapse of faith and a loss of loyalty"; the CMC had already expelled him from the armed forces and stripped him of his rank of general. On 7 May 2026 the Military Court sentenced Wei for bribe-taking to death with a two-year reprieve, lifelong deprivation of political rights and confiscation of all personal property, to be followed by life imprisonment without commutation or parole; his successor Li Shangfu received the same sentence that day.