First it was his hand-picked foreign minister Qin Gang. Then it was Defence Minister Gen. Li Shangfu, a protege of his childhood friend. And now it’s his close aide Admiral Miao Hua. One by one, Xi Jinping’s trusted lieuemants and aides are falling like ninepins.
That not all is right in the higher echelons of the Chinese government can be had from the fact that in the last one year alone, 20 military personnel have been removed.
Chinese Defence Ministry Spokesperson Wu Qian says that the Chinese Communist Party has decided to suspend Admiral Miao from duty pending an investigation for, quote-unquote, serious breach of discipline. A “serious breach of discipline” is nothing but code for corruption.
Admiral Miao is the latest Chinese Government official to be sacked by President Xi Jinping. His fall from grace is all the more shocking because it was Xi himself who had promoted him in 2015 and made him the youngest serving Admiral in the Chinese Navy.
Admiral Miao was no ordinary officer. He was heading the Political Work Department of China’s Central Military Commission, which oversees party ideology and personnel changes. It’s the apex body of China’s military leadership. And Xi Jinping chairs it. So, a Central Military Commission membership means direct access to Xi.
The 69-year-old Admiral spent years doing party work in the south-eastern coastal province of Fujian but his career took off only after Xi came to power in 2012. His time in Fujian overlapped with Xi’s years there. Xi rose from being a party official to the Governor of the province between 1999 and 2002.
The Admiral was last seen in public on 7 October, when he attended the 70th anniversary celebration of a State-run para-military organisation in Xinjiang.
Admiral Miao is the second Central Military Commission member to be removed from office since the current line-up took office in 2022. The first was former defence minister Gen. Li Shangfu, who was sacked in October 2023. Both Li and his predecessor, Gen. Wei Fenghe, were expelled from the party in June this year for, quote-unquote, “serious violations of discipline”.
According to a media report, it has left the seven-member Central Military Commission chaired by Xi Jinping with a rare double vacancy and only two serving members, apart from Xi and the two vice-chairpersons. It’s a situation not seen in decades.
The Admiral’s sacking comes close on the heels of a report published by the Financial Times newspaper of the U.K. that China’s current defence minister, Admiral Dong Jun, is being investigated for alleged corruption. Admiral Dong was also appointed by Xi Jinping.
Christopher Johnson, a former analyst with U.S. spy agency Central Intelligence Agency, tells Financial Times that the development raises concerns about how Xi is picking his defence ministers. “Xi bucked tradition in 2018 by naming Wei, from the P.L.A. Rocket Forces, to the post instead of an Army General. With Dong, a Navy man, Xi’s military personnel dons assured him the vetting was airtight after a four-month search. So Xi is left to wonder, what corner of the P.L.A. is not corrupt?”
The recent sackings raise more questions.
Is corruption eroding China’s combat readiness?
Is Xi really rooting out corruption or using his anti-corruption drive as a ruse to purge his political rivals?
Joel Wuthnow, a senior research fellow at National Defence University in the U.S. tells A.F.P. news agency that it has to be a huge distraction for Xi as he presses his military to be ready for a war with Taiwan by 2027. Xi has vowed that the re-unification of Taiwan with the Chinese Mainland is inevitable. He has pledged to take all measures necessary to achieve that goal. The sacking of key Chinese defence personnel comes at a time when Beijing is increasing military pressure on Taiwan and ratcheting up the tensions in the contested waters of the Indo-Pacific.
Meanwhile, Defence Minister Admiral Dong Jun’s case is getting curiouser and curiouser. Chinese Defence Ministry Spokesperson Wu Qian says that the Minister remains in his position and that the Financial Times report is a fabrication
A former Navy chief, Admiral Dong was last seen outside China on 21 November when he delivered a speech at the Asean Defence Ministers’ Meeting in Lao P.D.R.’s capital Vientiane. He declined to meet his U.S. counterpart Gen. Lloyd Austin on the margins of that meeting citing U.S. actions over Taiwan but he did hold talks with the defence ministers of India, New Zealand and Malaysia. In fact, it was the first meeting between India’s Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and Admiral Dong after India and China agreed in October to end a four-year-long military standoff. It was also the first such meeting after Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping met on the sidelines of the BRICS summit in Russia.
The Chinese defence minister has traditionally been a member of both the Central Military Commission and the State Council, which is China’s cabinet-level executive body. Former defence ministers Gen. Li and Gen. Wei were both members of the Central Military Commission. They were both State Councillors, too. However, Admiral Dong was neither promoted to the Central Military Commission at a Communist Party meeting held this year nor was he appointed to the State Council during a Government reshuffle in March.
Admiral Dong replaced Gen. Li as defence minister in December 2023. Gen. Li was himself removed seven months into the job for allegedly taking bribes in exchange for granting favours in violation of military and party discipline. Gen. Wei was defence minister for five years prior to that, until he was accused of similar charges and placed under investigation for, quote-unquote, “seriously violating political and organisational discipline by helping others gain improper benefits in personnel arrangements.”
Both Gen. Li and Gen. Wei have since been expelled from the Communist Party of China. They are being investigated for corruption.
What is also common to Gen. Li and Gen. Wei is that both were associated with China’s Rocket Force. While Gen. Wei used to head it, Gen. Li headed a department that developed weapons, including missiles. Xi Jinping set up the Rocket Force in 2016 to oversee China’s nuclear and conventional missiles. A Bloomberg report cites U.S. intelligence as saying that corruption in the Rocket Force led to malfunctioning equipment and even missile fuel being replaced with water!
Incidentally, many more personnel from the Rocket Force have been sacked. The Rocket Force chief Gen. Li Yuchao was sacked in July 2023 along with his Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Sun Jinming. Both were expelled from the party and investigated for corruption. Also sacked were Gen. Li Yuchao’s deputy Gen. Liu Guangbin and a former deputy Lt. Gen. Zhang Zhenzhong.
Three senior officials were also removed from their posts at state-owned missile defence organisations in December 2023.
Neil Thomas, a fellow on Chinese politics at the New York City-headquartered Asia Society, says that “the rot in China’s military remains even deeper than previously suspected”.
Heather Williams from the Washington, D.C.-based Centre for Strategic and International Studies says that “corruption in the Chinese military rightly should raise questions about its ability to achieve military objectives and reach the ‘great rejuvenation’ envisioned by Xi”.
Little wonder then that a recent statement issued by the Central Military Commission reads that “senior party committees and senior cadres of the Army must take the lead in respecting, studying, obeying and applying the law.”
By: Ramesh Ramachandran (DDIndia)