China’s military shake-up may hint at corruption — or Xi Jinping’s weakness

The weapons are part of a rapidly expanding program that is critical for China’s long-term goal of taking over Taiwan and challenging the United States in the region.

Through the reshuffle, Xi has ousted the missile force’s commander, a PLA Rocket Force veteran who has been missing from public view for months. It comes less than a week after the removal of Foreign Minister Qin Gang — a Xi loyalist who had also disappeared from public view. In both cases, no official explanation was given, but such disappearances are often signs of an investigation.

“When you add it all up, it’s probably one of the biggest purges” in the rocket force’s history, said Lyle Morris, senior fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis. “The changeover is very rare and very quick. And so that tells you something is going on. ”

The incidents could hint at potential cracks in Xi’s hold on power in his third term, presaging further uncertainty within the upper echelons of the Chinese system, analysts said.

“This has brought to the fore the fact that Xi has problems within both the diplomatic and military systems,” said Lin Ying-Yu, assistant professor of international affairs at Tamkang University in New Taipei City. “This shows that Xi may be encountering more difficulties when it comes to control internally.”

Here’s what happened and why it matters.

Xi appointed Wang Houbin, the former deputy commander of the navy, as the new head of the PLA Rocket Force, replacing Li Yuchao, who had been commander since January last year. Xu Xisheng, from China’s air force, was made political commissar, an equally senior position in charge of enforcing party directives.

Li’s deputy, Liu Guangbin, had also been absent from public view for months, prompting speculation that they were being targeted under Xi’s decade-long campaign to root out graft and inefficiencies in the military.

Since coming to power in 2012, Xi has overseen a crackdown on corruption across the Chinese military, resulting in the purge of senior commanders like Fang Fenghui, former chief of the joint staff of the People’s Liberation Army, who accompanied Xi on his first in-person meeting with President Donald Trump in 2017. He was sentenced to life in prison for corruption in 2019.

The South China Morning Post reported last week that Li and two other senior commanders were under investigation by the military’s anti-corruption unit. A report by the Financial Times this week, citing two foreign senior government officials, said the Rocket Force leaders were being investigated for leaking military secrets.

“Xi’s decision to purge the leadership of the PLA Rocket Force shows he remains in control of the military, but his decade-long campaign against corruption has failed to eliminate graft among high-ranking officers,” said Neil Thomas, a fellow for Chinese politics at the Asia Society.

Xi is now in the middle of a new effort to stamp out corruption. In June, the Chinese Communist Party’s powerful disciplinary body said more than 39 officials, including military cadres, had been investigated since October. The commission “resolutely eliminates the cancer of corruption with a zero-tolerance attitude,” it said.

In the past month, the military has launched probes into its procurement system and issued strict new guidelines on the social interaction of leaders. Both appear to be aimed at clamping down on the leaking of confidential information and other disciplinary violations, according to the rules and state media coverage of the campaign.

“It is notable because Xi is sending a signal internally to the military to say, we’re watching you, and we’re going to selectively take down a few members to send a signal into the system that an excessive amount of corruption is unacceptable,” Morris said.

Corruption in the PLA is a long-term problem, and the current cleanup campaign is the third since Xi took office.

“Many of these officers were involved in procuring weapons systems for the rocket force, they worked in the bureaucracy, they may have tried to influence bidding or taken bribes,” said Li Nan, a senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s East Asian Institute.

The persistence of corruption at the top levels of the military suggests Xi still lacks sufficient personal ties and control to prevent abuses of military power, Li said.

After the last major crackdown around five years ago, Fang was jailed for life, and Zhang Yang, a top general, died by suicide before being formally charged. Each man held important positions in the Chinese military for years before being investigated.

What impact will it have on the military?

The appointments of new commanders from other parts of the military represent a sharp departure from tradition. Wang and Xu have naval and air force backgrounds, while Li and his predecessors were from within the missile force.

The ouster of the top two leaders of the force that controls the country’s nuclear arsenal and their replacement with officers from different services is “startling,” said Joel Wuthnow, a senior research fellow at National Defense University.

The rocket force is the most sensitive branch of the PLA, and “for someone with zero experience in the service” to replace the commander is “virtually unprecedented,” he said.

The move could have implications for any potential conflict over Taiwan, the self-governed island democracy that Beijing claims it will take by force if necessary to compel unification.

If war should break out, the rocket force’s long-range conventional missiles could target U.S. bases and aircraft carriers in the western Pacific, while its short-range ballistic missiles could target Taiwan.

“If you don’t have confidence in the leaders of a force that is so central to a Taiwan campaign, then that would weigh heavily on a decision on whether to get into a war in the first place,” Wuthnow said.

More broadly, the appointments represent something of a blow for the PLA Rocket Force, which was elevated to a full branch of the military only eight years ago and has quickly expanded.

“This is a devastating public humiliation for the rocket force,” said Decker Eveleth, the author of a recent report on the PLA Rocket Force and graduate research assistant at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. “[It] signals to everyone that Xi is not confident about the Rocket Force’s ability to police their own. If the PLARF cannot be trusted with the massive amounts of money Beijing is handing them to expand their force, Beijing might begin to think that money could be better used elsewhere.”

Theodora Yu in Taipei, Christian Shepherd in Oxford, England, and Ellen Nakashima in Washington contributed to this report.