On June 27, the Communist Party’s Politburo announced a corruption investigation into former defense ministers, Generals Wei Fenghe and Li Shangfu, and expelled them from the ruling elite. (The PLA reports to the party, not the Chinese government.) The two former ministers have also been stripped of their ranks and are currently under investigation by the military.
It was the first time in the history of China’s military, founded in 1927, that the party had announced corruption investigations into two defense ministers on the same day. “It’s an unusual decision,” Hong Kong reporter William Cheng wrote. South China Morning Post“It highlights the Communist Party leadership’s anger and frustration over persistent corruption, which it sees as a threat to China’s warfighting capabilities and nuclear deterrent.”
“You can sense the party’s anger and resentment in the accusations against Wei and Li,” a political scientist at Nanjing University told the paper on condition of anonymity. “It seems to convey a sentiment of, ‘How dare you fail me on the most important mission.'” The expert speculated that Communist leaders believe corruption in the officer corps calls into question Xi Jinping’s control over China’s nuclear arsenal.
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General Wei was the first commander of the rocket force, which controls almost all of the country’s nuclear arsenal, before serving as defense minister from 2018 to 2023. The department was subject to a wave of purges late last year.
For example, the two top officials of the Rocket Forces, the political commissar and commander, were replaced by officers from outside the force at the end of July last year. At least 70 members of the Rocket Forces were reported missing in the latter half of last year. Prior to the mass layoffs, the head of the Rocket Forces’ third division is believed to have committed suicide by hanging in July last year.
The rocket force is vital to Xi Jinping’s efforts to annex Taiwan. China’s bellicose leader by all indications intends to threaten to use nuclear weapons to discourage others from defending the island nation. Throughout the century, and especially since mid-2021, China has continued to threaten nuclear attacks against anyone who supports Taiwan.
These threats would be hard to believe if others thought the Rocket Forces were not ready to launch. Indeed, some believe deep-rooted corruption has weakened the force’s capabilities. Bloomberg News The fuel tanks of Chinese missiles were reportedly filled with water instead of propellant, due to widespread corruption.
General He Weidong, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission and China’s third-ranking military officer, blasted the “fake fighting capabilities” in March. South China Morning Post General He was reportedly referring to corruption in military equipment procurement.
His comments were quickly removed from the internet.
“I think this says a lot about actual warfighting capability,” James Char of Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies told CNN.
Did China’s officer turnover reduce readiness or demoralize its senior officers? At first glance, it would seem so. After all, during periods of purges, generals and admirals are likely to be preoccupied with relentless attacks from political opponents at home.
But many analysts take a different view. “While this system seems unstable, it doesn’t necessarily lead to a disabling of military power,” Richard Fisher of the International Center for Assessment and Strategy told me after the dismissals of generals Wei and Li. “The PLA’s key strategy is total surprise and mass attack, and that tends to compensate for a lot of its internal weaknesses.”
“The expulsion of two former PLA generals from the party is seen as an indicator of the problems General Secretary Xi Jinping has with the Chinese Communist Party and the PLA, but their expulsion is more likely a sign that Xi is trying to ensure the military’s honesty and credibility ahead of an invasion of Taiwan,” said former U.S. Navy intelligence officer and former PLA general. “The expulsion of two former PLA generals from the party is seen as an indicator of the problems General Secretary Xi Jinping has with the Chinese Communist Party and the PLA, but their expulsion is more likely a sign that Xi is trying to ensure the military’s honesty and credibility ahead of an invasion of Taiwan.” Embracing Communist China: America’s Greatest Strategic Mistake“More importantly, Admiral Dong Jun, former commander of the PLA Navy and former commander of the East China Sea Joint Operations Center, who is now China’s Minister of Defense, signals a commitment to Xi Jinping’s 2012 order to develop the PLA’s capability to seize Taiwan.”
There appears to be growing disagreement within the military about the appropriateness of a cross-strait thrust. “A significant portion of the Chinese military leadership opposes action against Taiwan,” Charles Barton of the Prague-based think tank Synopsys told me in April. Former Chinese air force general Liu Yazhou, considered one of China’s leading military thinkers, was reportedly sentenced to death in 2022 for opposing such an invasion, as revealed last year.
The purge of the defense minister is arguably a sign of Xi Jinping’s tightening control over the officer corps. It is not hard to guess what happens next.
Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Collapse of China and China Goes to War. Follow him on X. Gordon G Chang.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own.
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