The corruption scandal gripping China’s army

In an effort to create a cutting edge force, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has spent billions of dollars expanding and modernizing its armed forces at a pace rarely seen in peace time. But on the evidence of the last few days, the most cutting edge features of its top ranks remain corruption and political intrigue.

Miao Hua, one of China’s top commanders has been suspended and is under investigation for “serious violations of discipline” — CCP-speak for corruption, according to the defense ministry. Miao, a navy admiral, is one of six members of the party’s powerful central military commission, chaired by President Xi Jinping. He was also head of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) political works department — charged with ensuring CCP control over the PLA. In the military pecking order, he was regarded as more powerful than defense minister Dong Jun. The graft allegations against him will have shaken China’s military leadership.

The shake-up at the Rocket Force has provided an extra layer of intrigue

Rumors have also swirled that Dong Jun himself is under investigation — fueled after he refused to meet US defense secretary Lloyd Austin at an Asian defense meeting in Laos earlier this month, a decision Austin described as “unfortunate.” If Dong is deposed he would be the third successive defense minister to face corruption charges — all the more damaging, since both Dong and his predecessor General Li Shangfu, who was ousted after just seven months in the job, were hand-picked by Xi.

In recent months, a purge of top generals has shaken China’s Rocket Force, the most secretive and sensitive branch of China’s military which oversees the country’s strategic nuclear forces as well as a conventional missile arsenal that would be central to any assault on Taiwan. Those targeted included current and past commanders. General Li Yuchao, chief of the Rocket Force and his deputy were formally removed last year after they had disappeared for months. Among others purged have been a navy commander responsible for the South China Sea, where the CCP is aggressively asserting extensive territorial claims, and several others responsible for procuring equipment — long a notoriously corrupt part of the military.

When Xi came to power in 2012, he pledged to clean up the PLA, which ran a business empire so big that preparing for war often appeared to be a secondary concern. The PLA is also a party organization, which means its loyalty is supposed to be first and foremost to the CCP, enforced through a system of political commissars, which Xi sought to bolster. Miao Hua, purged this week, was the top commissar.

The system has been criticized for undermining military professionalism, and in spite (or possibly because of) Xi’s efforts, the graft only seems to have got worse. Because those now being targeted include Xi’s hand-picked officials, it will inevitably be seen as an indictment of his abilities and judgement. Suggestions that it is all down to graft should be treated with some caution though. “Corruption” is a catch-all used by the party as a cloak for all manner of misdemeanors, real or imagined, and is frequently a veil for the purge of political opponents. That ambiguity was clear when Xi told military leaders in a speech earlier this year, “Be clear, the gun must always stay in the hands of those who are reliable and loyal to the party.”

The shake-up at the Rocket Force has provided an extra layer of intrigue. There has been speculation about whether the purged commanders leaked military information at a time when China is undertaking a substantial expansion of its nuclear arsenal, making the Rocket Force of special interest to Western intelligence agencies. CIA Director William Burns said that rebuilding human spy networks in China is a top priority after they were compromised and ruthlessly dismantled more than a decade ago. Between 2010 and 2012, dozens of CIA sources were reportedly killed or disappeared after Beijing cracked the systems used by the agency to communicate with them. “We’ve made progress and we’re working very hard over recent years to ensure that we have strong human intelligence capability to complement what we can acquire through other methods,” Burns told the Aspen Security Forum last year.

According to US intelligence assessments, graft inside the PLA’s Rocket Force became so extensive that missiles were filled with water instead of fuel and silos in western China had lids that could not properly open. Those assessments, reported by Bloomberg, may well be mischief-making on the part of American spooks, but there are strategists who speculate as to whether graft has become so pervasive it could undermine the PLA’s ability to contemplate major military action — against Taiwan, for instance. The CCP will be well aware that deep-seated corruption has at times undermined Russia’s war effort in Ukraine

There are rumors this weekend of more officials in trouble, and deeper investigations into the country’s sprawling military industrial complex. The PLA’s official newspaper has pledged to wage an ongoing “war on graft.” If corruption is indeed the reason for Miao’s removal, then he will have presided over an extensive network to facilitate that graft. As for China’s defense minister Dong Jun, rumors of his purge are “slanderous” and “sheer fabrication,” a military spokesman has said. That might sound like a ringing endorsement of the beleaguered boss, but such is the ruthless and opaque court of Xi Jinping that it seems guaranteed to further fuel the rumors.