On June 27, the Politburo of the Communist Party of China announced corruption investigations into Generals Wei Fenghe and Li Shangfu, the two previous defense ministers, and expelled both from the ruling organization. (The People's Liberation Army reports to the Party, not the Chinese state.) The two former ministers were also stripped of their ranks and now face investigations by the military.
This was the first time in the history of the Chinese military, founded in 1927, that the Party announced corruption investigations of two defense ministers on the same day. The "unusual decision," writes William Zheng of Hong Kong's South China Morning Post, "has underscored the fury and frustration of the Communist Party's leadership over persistent graft that is deemed a threat to China's fighting capacity and nuclear deterrence."
"You can sense the Party's anger and fury in the accusations on Wei and Li," a Nanjing University political scientist, speaking anonymously to the paper, said. "You can almost tell there is a feeling of, 'How dare you let me down on the most important job!'" The expert speculates that Communist Party leaders believe that corruption in the officer corps calls into question Xi Jinping's control over China's nuclear arsenal.
Before serving as defense minister from 2018 to 2023, General Wei was the first chief of the Rocket Force, which has responsibility for almost all of the country's nuclear weapons. In the second half of last year, that branch suffered purge after purge.
For instance, the top two Rocket Force officers, the political commissar and the commander, were replaced by officers outside that branch at the end of last July. At least 70 in the Rocket Force have reportedly been disappeared in the last half of last year. Last July, prior to the mass firings, it appears the chief of the Rocket Force's Third Department committed suicide by hanging.
The Rocket Force is essential to Xi Jinping's efforts to annex Taiwan. China's bellicose leader is, from all indications, planning to make threats to use nuclear weapons to discourage others from coming to the defense of the island republic. Throughout this century, but especially since the middle of 2021, China has been warning of nuke attacks for those aiding Taiwan.
Those threats would not be credible if others thought the Rocket Force was not ready to launch. Some, in fact, believe that endemic corruption undermines the ability of that branch. In January, Bloomberg News reported that the fuel tanks of China's missiles were filled with water instead of propellant, due to rampant corruption.
General He Weidong, the second-ranked vice chairman of the Central Military Commission and China's No. 3 military official, railed against "fake combat capabilities" in March. The South China Morning Post reports that General He was apparently referring to corruption in the procurement of military equipment.
His comments were quickly scrubbed from the internet.
"I think that says a lot about the actual combat capabilities," said James Char of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore to CNN.
Has the churn in China's officer ranks eroded readiness or sapped the will of senior officers? It would at first glance seem so. After all, at a time of continuing purges, generals and admirals would be preoccupied about unrelenting attacks from political enemies at home.
Yet many analysts adopt a different view. "While the system seems unstable, it does not necessarily translate into military ineffectiveness," Richard Fisher of the International Assessment and Strategy Center told me after the sacking of Generals Wei and Li. "The key PLA strategy is to strike with utter surprise and mass, which tends to compensate for many internal weaknesses."
"Although the removal of two former PLA generals from Communist Party membership is viewed as an indicator of the troubles General Secretary Xi has over the Chinese Communist Party and its PLA, a better view is that their removal is an indicator Xi is ensuring the integrity and trustworthiness of the military before an invasion of Taiwan," said James Fanell, a former U.S. Navy intelligence officer and co-author of Embracing Communist China: America's Greatest Strategic Failure, to me. "More important is the appointment of Admiral Dong Jun, the former commander of the Chinese navy and the former commander of the East China Sea Joint Operations Center, who is now the PRC's defense minister. His appointment demonstrates Xi's commitment to the order he gave to the PLA in 2012 to develop the capability to take Taiwan."
On the advisability of storming across the Taiwan Strait, there has apparently been widespread dissension in the ranks. "A significant portion of China's military leadership oppose action on Taiwan," Charles Burton of Prague-based think tank Sinopsis told me in April. Liu Yazhou, a former Chinese air force general considered one of the country's leading military thinkers, reportedly received a death sentence in 2022—revealed last year—for opposing such an invasion.
The purge of the defense ministers is almost certainly a sign that Xi is increasing his control over the officer corps. It's not hard to figure out what comes next.
Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China and China Is Going to War. Follow him on X @GordonGChang.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
