Chinese General Fang Fenghui, formerly chief of joint staff for the People’s Liberation Army, was sentenced to life in prison for corruption on Wednesday.
China’s state-run Xinhua news service offered few details beyond Fang’s conviction on counts of “accepting and offering bribes as well as holding a huge amount of property from unidentified sources.”
“He was also deprived of his political rights for life and had his personal properties confiscated,” Xinhua reported. “The illicit money and properties confiscated will be turned over to the state coffers.”
Fang disappeared without explanation from the public stage in 2017. A few months after his old post as chair of the Central Military Commission was effectively dissolved to give Communist Party leader Xi Jinping more direct control over Chinese military, Fang was expelled from the Party and handed over to a military court for prosecution on corruption charges. Sources within the Chinese military muttered that Fang was an “opportunist” closely linked to other top generals who fell out of favor and were purged.
Over 50 senior Chinese generals, plus over a million officials at all levels, have been prosecuted during Xi’s lengthy crackdown on government and military corruption. Fang is the first ranking official to be sentenced on corruption charges this year.
The Associated Press noted on Wednesday that while there may be a political dimension to corruption trials in China, there is also plenty of graft to prosecute:
Corruption has long been considered rife within the PLA, with some top generals reported to have accumulated vast fortunes in cash and gifts, including golden statues of Mao Zedong and cases of expensive liquor stacked to the ceiling in underground caches.
Along with the selling of ranks and positions, practices such as embezzlement of housing and welfare funds were seen as damaging morale, discipline and combat preparedness, something Xi, a former military officer, has been eager to change.
Two former top generals and members of the Central Military Commission controlling the armed forces, Xu Caihou and Guo Boxiong, had earlier become high-profile targets of Xi’s campaign.
Fang, 67, was seen as a protege of Generals Xu and Guo. Xu died of cancer in 2015 before his trial, while Guo is currently serving a life sentence for bribery charges. Another member of Xu and Guo’s circle with a seat on the Central Military Commission, General Zhang Yang, was expelled from the Communist Party and stripped of his rank in 2017 and committed suicide while under investigation.
Not long before he disappeared, Fang accompanied Xi to his first meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump, so his downfall appears to have come swiftly even though his mentors were prosecuted for corruption over a year beforehand.
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