What Xi Jinping's Purge of Military Elites Means for China

The Chinese military has undergone a dramatic overhaul with the expulsion in late December of nine military officials from the National People's Congress, the country's rubber-stamp legislature, according to the official news service Xinhua.

Among those expelled—and likely to be banished from elite Chinese politics for good—were four generals from the military's rocket force. The strategic missile responsible for the country's conventional and nuclear arsenal has been thrown into disarray amid a monthslong anti-graft probe that goes back years and which has swept up senior leaders at the very top of the military establishment.

The latest move was yet another indication of President Xi Jinping's subtle yet strict crackdown on corruption and suspected ineffectiveness throughout the Chinese government, especially within his armed forces, which he intends to make into a "world-class" fighting force by the middle of the century.

The decision by the long-ruling Communist Party's Central Committee to remove rocket force officials Lu Hong, Li Yuchao, Li Chuanguang, and Zhou Yaning coincided with the recent appointment of a new defense minister, Dong Jun, by a presidential decree.

China's last defense chief, Li Shangfu, was at the heart of the corruption investigation and disappeared for weeks before being dismissed without a public explanation.

In search of reliable senior officials, Xi now faces a moment of crisis as even recently promoted officials have been swept up in his anti-corruption campaign. Officially, Li spent seven months as defense minister. In reality, it was just five months before he vanished from public view.

Ou Si-fu, a research fellow and division director at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research, Taiwan's top military think tank, said corruption in the People's Liberation Army remains rampant.

"During the last two decades, Beijing has poured many budgets and resources into defense modernization. Owing to a shortage of transparency, many officials have cut a big slice of this defense fat for private purposes," Ou told Newsweek.

Unconfirmed reports pointed to Xi's loss of trust in Li after he covered up the corruption of his subordinates. China's most powerful leader in decades then decided to expand the investigation, including conceivably into the foreign affairs establishment.

"The expelled officials included some of the brightest rising stars in President Xi Jinping's military: two generals who oversaw satellite launches and manned space missions; an admiral who helped entrench Beijing's presence in the disputed South China Sea; and a missile commander who had honed China's ability to respond to a possible nuclear war," Ou said.

The PLA's decade of reform and weapons development under Xi will be affected, "but it's very difficult to evaluate the extent of this loss," he said. Should tensions escalate with Taiwan, ongoing internal issues may reduce the PLA's real-world threat.

Recent signs suggest Xi is about to intensify his anti-graft crackdown. On Monday, on China's widely used social media website Weibo, the No. 1 trending hashtag previewed an upcoming documentary episode featuring confessions by allegedly corrupt officials.

The show carried by Chinese state broadcaster CCTV from January 6-9 reveals what has been described as 12 "typical cases" of graft among government officials. Its purpose, CCTV said, will be "to serve to warn and educate."

"It's very obvious that Xi's effort to make China's military competitive and equipped with advanced technology now at least suffers from corruption because, after all, he needs to show to the world that his army can fight and win," said Alfred Wu, an associate professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore.

"But now you can see that military generals are involved in corruption," Wu told Newsweek.

Dong, China's new defense head, is the latest to have his commitment tested. Until his ascension to the post, he was commander of the PLA Navy. He is now the country's first defense minister to rise from the maritime service.

Update 9/1/24, 10:25 p.m. ET: This article was updated with additional information about CCTV's anti-corruption documentary series.