A Former Defense Minister’s Rise and Fall in the CCP

China's Defence Minister Wei Fenghe (top L) salutes as China's leader Xi Jinping (bottom) arrives for the opening ceremony of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on March 4, 2023. Noel Celis /AFP via Getty Images

Gen. Wei Fenghe, the first People’s Liberation Army (PLA) officer to receive the rank of general by Chinese leader Xi Jinping, the man he promoted as commander of the Rocket Force, and the man whom he appointed Defense Minister, has ended his 53-year military career, falling in a political purge of the Rocket Force.

All happened in months because Mr. Xi lost trust in the leadership of the Rocket Force.

The PLA Rocket Force, formerly known as the Second Artillery Corps, controls China’s land-based ballistic, Hypersonic, and cruise missiles—including nuclear weapons. Gen. Wei was the Rocket Force’s first commander.

In the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) bureaucracy, factional backgrounds and nepotism are key to being promoted. During Gen. Wei’s half-century military career, three “key dignitaries” emerged to catapult him to China’s Minister of National Defense, two of whom were CCP leaders Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping.

In the end, however, Gen. Wei was caught in the middle of a factional struggle for control over the levers of power of the CCP, and he has not been seen publicly since March.

PLA in Mao’s Era

In February 1954, Gen. Wei was born to a farming family in Liaocheng, Shandong Province of east China. He entered the PLA at 16, joined the CCP at 18, and served as a squad leader and platoon leader of the Second Artillery Corps when the Cultural Revolution, a sociopolitical campaign launched by former CCP leader Mao Zedong in 1966, swept across the country.

In 1975, the 21-year-old young man entered a training class organized by the State Defense Science and Industry Commission to study engine specialties related to large missiles.

In 1979, Gen. Wei became a staff officer in the training unit of the Second Artillery Corps, and in 1982, he went to the Second Artillery Command College to study. After graduation, he gradually entered the Second Artillery Corps command.

In 1994, Gen. Wei was promoted to senior colonel at 40 and served as a brigade commander, base chief of staff, and base commander of the Second Artillery Corps.

Newly elected state councilors (L-R) Zhao Kezhi, Wang Yi, and Wei Fenghe, Vice Premiers Hu Chunhua and Han Zheng, swear an oath during the seventh plenary session of the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, on March 19, 2018. Etienne Oliveau/Getty Images

Gen. Jing Zhiyuan, a base commander of the Second Artillery Corps staff in 1999, was a hometown friend of the young PLA officer in Shandong and played a role in promoting him to the top.

In 2003, Gen. Jing was promoted to commander of the Second Artillery Corps. Two years later, Gen. Wei was transferred to deputy chief of staff of the Second Artillery Corps and became chief of staff in 2006.

Aligning With Hu

At this time, Gen. Wei had the opportunity to get close to CCP leaders, and he was favored by Mr. Hu, who was eager to increase his own strength in the military.

The leadership of Mr. Hu and then-premier Wen Jiabao encountered obstruction from former CCP head Jiang Zemin who had his own faction.

After aligning himself with Mr. Hu and Mr. Wen, Gen. Wei was promoted to deputy chief of general staff of the PLA in 2010. In October 2012, he succeeded the outgoing Gen. Jing as commander of the Second Artillery Corps, replacing Zhang Haiyang, then political commissar of the Second Artillery Corps, who was a member of the Jiang faction and was considered the most likely commander of the Second Artillery Corps.

However, months before Mr. Xi became the head of the CCP, internal factional struggles within the Party became severe and spilled out into the open.

On Feb. 6, 2012, Wang Lijun, vice mayor of Chongqing municipal and director of the Public Security Bureau of Chongqing, fled to the U.S. Consulate General in Chengdu to ask for political asylum out of concern over his safety after reporting to Bo Xilai—then a member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee and Secretary of Chongqing Municipal Committee—that the death of British businessman Neil Heywood involved Mr. Bo’s wife.

Mr. Wang was taken to Beijing by State Security officials to investigate his one-day stay at the U.S. consulate.

The “Wang Lijun” incident exposed other crimes of the Jiang Zemin faction, including those of Bo Xilai and Zhou Yongkang, a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau and Secretary of the Central Political and Legislative Affairs Commission.

In response, Jiang’s supporters attempted to stage a coup d'état to depose Mr. Xi who was scheduled to come to power at the end of that year.

Mr. Xi, therefore, forged an alliance with Mr. Hu on the eve of his rule.

The “Wang Lijun” incident can be seen as a watershed in the CCP’s complex political situation.

Since 2013, his second year in power, Mr. Xi rolled out a massive “anti-corruption” campaign and in the process purged those aligned with the Jiang faction in the party, in both the political and military. For example, Mr. Bo and Mr. Zhou were both sentenced to life imprisonment; Xu Caihou, then-member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee and vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission was expelled from the Party and handed over to a military prosecutor. During the investigation, he died of bladder cancer in Beijing; Guo Boxiong, vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission, was expelled from the Party and dismissed.

Ten years after the “anti-corruption” campaign, Xiao Pei, deputy secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, publicly disclosed in October 2022 that the CCP’s disciplinary departments had filed more than 4,648,000 cases. It said 207,000 officials at the highest level of party and government units at all levels had been investigated. A total of 553 Chinese cadres at the vice-ministerial level or above had been investigated, including many CCP leaders at the state level and vice-state level.

Gen. Wei stood with Mr. Xi in his long and bitter struggle against the Jiang faction, becoming a loyal subordinate and solid military backer.

Xi’s First General and First Commander of the Rocket Forces

Gen. Wei had been a lieutenant general when he became commander of the Second Artillery.

On Nov. 23, 2012, in Beijing’s Bayi Building, Mr. Xi presided over a promotion ceremony for Gen. Wei. Mr. Xi had just assumed the roles of head of the CCP and chairman of the Central Military Commission earlier that month.

Fan Changlong, vice chairman of the Military Commission, read the order signed by Mr. Xi to promote him to the rank of general—the highest rank in the PLA—and Xu Qiliang, another vice chairman, presided over the promotion ceremony, with all members of the Military Commission attending.

In December 2015, as part of Mr. Xi’s military reform measures, the Second Artillery Corps was renamed the “Rocket Force” and Gen. Wei became the first commander. Other senior ranks of the former Second Artillery remained in their original positions.

Dubbed the “Ace Army,” Mr. Xi has placed his hope in the Rocket Force to play a critical role in reforming the PLA to be a combat-ready force.

On Dec. 31, 2015, at the inaugural meeting of the Rocket Force and Strategic Support Forces, Mr. Xi said that the Rocket Force is “the core of the CCP’s strategic deterrence” and a strategic support for the Communist regime.

The Rocket Force is also an essential component of Beijing’s ongoing threat of military intervention against Taiwan, an independent island nation that mainland China views as a breakaway province. It has been independent since 1949 when Chiang Kai-shek withdrew his forces there after the fall of mainland China to the CCP.

However, soldiers of the Rocket Forces have allegedly come to fear they would be a primary target of strikes by U.S. and Taiwanese forces.

On Sept. 15, the PLA Daily, the mouthpiece of the CCP, published a front-page article accusing the Rocket Force of its “shortcomings and weaknesses” in combat effectiveness.

Xi’s First Appointed Defense Minister

In March 2018, Gen. Wei retired from the military at 64. But instead of releasing him to return to his hometown, Mr. Xi assigned Gen. Wei the highest nominal position for active-duty military personnel—the CCP’s National Defense Minister.

China's Defence Minister General Wei Fenghe (C) speaks during the ASEAN-China defense ministers informal meeting at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) security summit in Singapore on Oct. 19, 2018. Roslan Rahman /AFP via Getty Images

In June of the following year, Gen. Wei attended the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore where he vowed that “If anyone dares to split Taiwan from China, the Chinese army will not hesitate to start a war no matter the cost.”

Since then, Gen. Wei has repeatedly threatened Taiwan, making belligerent gestures in international forums. His “wolf warrior” rhetoric has aligned with the CCP’s tactics of rushing to unify Taiwan by force.

In March 2023, 69-year-old Gen. Wei stepped down as Defense Minister and Gen. Li Shangfu took over the post.

Up to this point, the retired Gen. Wei seems to have ended well in the CCP’s officialdom with the best state-level treatment for the rest of his life.

However, alleged leaks from the Rocket Force last year pushed Gen. Wei into the midst of another terrible political purge, despite being out of the Rocket Force for several years. Gen. Wei’s tenure as the commander of the Rocket Force had been between December 2015 and August 2017.

He has not made any public appearances since March.

At a press briefing of the Ministry of National Defense at the end of August, a reporter asked about the changes in the senior personnel of the Rocket Force and the disappearance of Gen. Wei for several months. The spokesman responded: “We will investigate every case and crack down on every corrupt official,” adding that the PLA “shows zero tolerance of corruption.”

Military Leaks

In October 2022, the U.S. Air Force University released a detailed report (pdf) revealing detailed information about the CCP’s Rocket Force that ranged from its core command system to its logistics bases, including the addresses of missile launch bases, the main functions of its units, the names of the people in charge, and the numbers of the units.

The report included a tree diagram showing the photos and relationships of those at the head of each department, as well as a map showing the locations of the Rocket Force’s deployments throughout China.

A Chinese man walks past a China-made missile at the Military Museum in Beijing, on Sept. 6, 2005. Guang Niu/Getty Images

On July 3, a 73-page report (pdf) on the “People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force Order of Battle 2023” was released by the James Martin Center of Nonproliferation Studies Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, a U.S. research institute. It specifies the coordinates of the Rocket Forces’ six brigades, the type of nuclear weapons, and the number of launchers possessed by each of the combat units; for example, Dongfeng-17 hypersonic ballistic missiles (DF-17) are now being deployed widely in the region neighboring South Korea and the Chinese provinces near Taiwan.

Such comprehensive military intelligence shocked military observers in China, who believed it could not have been acquired by satellites or accessible to ordinary Chinese personnel. They decided that undoubtedly the information had been leaked by core personnel of the Rocket Force.

Meanwhile, multiple sources disclosed in July that Rocket Force commander Li Yuchao had been taken away by the military’s “anti-corruption” agency for investigation while in office, along with vice commander Liu Guangbin and former vice commander Zhang Zhenzhong. Another former deputy commander of the Rocket Force, Wu Guohua, committed suicide at his home almost simultaneously.

On July 31, Mr. Xi appointed Wang Houbin from a different branch, the Navy, as the new commander of the Rocket Force and Xu Xisheng from the Air Force as political commissar of the Rocket Force.

The new top officers all come from outside of the Rocket Force.

China's leader Xi Jinping (R) shakes hands with Foreign Minister Wang Yi (L) and Defence Minister Wei Fenghe as they leave after the closing session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on March 13, 2019. Greg Baker /AFP via Getty Images

‘Blood-Letting’ Overhaul

In a few months, two generations of leadership in the Rocket Force have been removed.

Mr. Xi’s “blood-letting” overhaul is not just a punishment for corruption and military leaks but also political disloyalty to Mr. Xi himself.

There have been allegations about Mr. Xi’s concern over a coup d'état and assassination. An authoritative source familiar with the inner workings of the CCP told the Chinese Language of The Epoch Times on Sept.10 that Mr. Xi is afraid of being assassinated and is often absent from public occasions.

According to the source, Mr. Xi has become extremely insecure, which has made him more inclined to look for clues in some prophecies to circumvent problems before they occur. Mr. Xi allegedly believes an image of a bow and arrow in an ancient Chinese sign corresponds to the Rocket Force, and as a result, has decided to reorganize it.

Throughout CCP’s history, the head of the regime has never stopped purging subordinates or political opponents he views as a threat.

Gen. Wei is another high ranking official who has been caught up in the factional infighting of the CCP, despite being retired.

His fate seems like a microcosm of the CCP regime, reaching the pinnacle of power and then ending in ongoing factional strife.