Two of China’s top generals overseeing its nuclear missiles have been replaced with scant explanation in the biggest shake-up of the country’s military leadership in a decade, underlining Xi Jinping’s commitment to tightening control over the armed forces.
Two men from outside the ranks of the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF) were appointed to head the unit, state media have reported. Wang Houbin, from the navy, was appointed as commander and Xu Xisheng, from the air force, its political commissar – a Chinese Communist party role of equal grade to military commander.
The whereabouts of Wang’s predecessor, Li Yuchao, are unknown, although the South China Morning Post reported last week that Li had been taken away for investigation by China’s corruption watchdog, along with his deputy commander and a previous deputy commander.
The PLARF, established in 2016, is one of China’s most important military divisions, overseeing the army’s land-based conventional and nuclear ballistic missiles. The force has a number of bases located strategically near the Taiwan strait and would be critical in any potential attempted annexation of the self-governing island. That has made the appointment of two generals without a background in the rocket force all the more surprising.
Xi – China’s leader and military commander-in-chief – has in recent months emphasised the need to tighten the Communist party’s control over the military, an issue that has troubled party elders since the foundation of the People’s Republic. In a speech to military leaders in July, he stressed the importance of “maintaining the party’s absolute leadership over the military and ensuring stronger combat readiness”.
The anti-corruption push that Xi has used to assert control since coming to power in 2012 has also extended to the military. According to Beijing, it has swept up 2 million “tigers and flies” – Xi’s phrase for targeting both high- and low-ranking cadres – in the finance, energy, sports and business worlds. From the military, it has felled Fang Fenghui, the former PLA chief of staff, who was sentenced to life in prison in 2019 after being convicted on corruption charges.
The military’s equipment department last week announced that it was investigating corruption relating to procurement bids and the formation of private cliques dating back to 2017. The review would also investigate the leaking of secret information, the notice said.
Some observers have drawn a link between the military purges and the attempted coup by the Wagner group in Russia in June, when the government-funded paramilitary organisation staged an ultimately unsuccessful rebellion against Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president.
But, mindful of the risks of such insurrections, the PLA has never allowed paramilitary groups to operate with Wagner levels of autonomy, making such a dramatic rebellion unlikely. Others emphasise that the latest purges in China’s PLA should be seen in the context of a decade-long campaign to tighten the party’s control over all aspects of society.
“We need to see this as part of the much larger anti-corruption campaign that’s happening across the government,” said Meia Nouwens, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a thinktank.
Although China’s anti-corruption watchdog has not commented publicly on the removal of Li and his underlings, the status of about 10 current and former PLARF officials is believed to be unclear.
Rumours have swirled around what, if anything, Li and other PLARF officials who have been removed are accused of. One unnamed source speaking to the South China Morning Post said they had become “immoral” since moving to PLARF’s Beijing headquarters, which gave them the opportunity to monetise their privileged positions in one of China’s most closely watched military divisions.
Reports have also suggested the fact that people outside China had an unusually detailed understanding of the PLARF’s structure had triggered suspicion of the force’s leaders.
“In general, loyalty is a concern for the military,” Nouwens said. That has been a concern since before Xi came to power, but it is especially important now “because they are trying to modernise the force to make it more flexible and reactive. To do that they would need to devolve decision-making powers, and that means changing the very top-down structures.”
The appointment of two non-PLARF officials to the top jobs could suggest that “this is potentially about breaking patronages”, Nouwens said, emphasising that most analysis is highly speculative at this stage.
