ANALYSIS: Chinese Military Turmoil Casts Doubt on Rocket Force Capabilities

The Rocket Force, under the Eastern Theatre Command of China's People's Liberation Army (PLA), fires live missiles into the waters near Taiwan from an undisclosed location in China on Aug. 4, 2022. Eastern Theatre Command/Handout via Reuters

The year 2023 was marked by an array of provocative incidents by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the Taiwan Strait and the Indo-Pacific region. Still, it is far from evolving into a real war as the CCP grapples with internal issues in the military, especially its Rocket Force.

During the latter half of this year, the CCP overhauled its military organs, with senior military officials having been investigated, gone missing, or died for reasons that have not been disclosed. This purge, to a large extent, reveals that the Chinese military is not equipped to provoke a modern high-end conflict despite the belligerent posture that the communist regime puts on display.

Such military turmoil will likely prompt the CCP to make significant regional strategic shifts, affecting its positioning in the Indo-Pacific area and Taiwan Strait in the coming years.

Military Purge

First, on July 31, the Central Military Commission announced the appointment of Wang Houbin and Xu Xisheng as commander and political commissar of the Rocket Force, respectively. The meetings confirmed speculation that former Rocket Force commander Li Yuchao and political commissar Xu Zhongbo, who had been missing for several months, had lost their positions.

This was the biggest and most unexpected reorganization of the CCP’s military leadership in nearly a decade.

The two newly promoted, Wang Houbin and Xu Xisheng, come from the navy and air force, and neither have working experience in the Rocket Force.

A few days earlier, rumors spread about the death of Wu Guohua, a 66-year-old former deputy commander of the Rocket Force. Shanghai-based state media said that he died on July 4 after failing to recover from an illness.

On July 28, Hong Kong media reported that deputy commander Liu Guangbin and Zhang Zhenzhong, deputy chief of staff of the Joint Staff Department of the Central Military Commission, were under investigation since March.

As of this December, several dozen officials of the Rocket Force have reportedly been taken away for investigation. These moves reflect that the cause of the reshuffle in the Rocket Force is not simple.

Corruption, Intelligence Leak, and Others

On Oct. 24, China announced the formal dismissal of Defense Minister Li Shangfu, who had not been seen for nearly two months.

Gen. Li has a background in the Second Artillery System, the predecessor of the Rocket Force, and had been the Minister of Equipment Development of the Central Military Commission.

Chinese Defence Minister Li Shangfu attends a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu in Moscow on April 16, 2023. Sputnik/Pavel Bednyakov/Pool via Reuters

Gen. Li’s removal coincided with the purge of senior management in the Rocket Force, sparking speculations about problems such as military equipment procurement.

The Rocket Force is relatively small but highly technical compared to other military branches. The weapons systems at disposal are also capital- and technology-intensive, which creates a situation in which the force has a vast number of resources per capita and cultivates the soil of corruption for the leadership of this force.

Therefore, it is not uncommon for the military management sphere to be convicted of corruption. Obviously, we cannot rule out the political reasons, as corruption charges are always CCP’s veiled operations that can bring down its rivals within the party.

Another cause for this internal military purge is officials’ intent to leak intelligence to foreign governments or organizations. If it is this case, the CCP will end these officials’ lives soon or may have already done so.

Former Foreign Minister Qin Gang, who disappeared almost half a year ago, may have been involved in such a case.

China's then Foreign Minister Qin Gang attends a press conference at the Media Center of the National People's Congress (NPC) in Beijing on March 7, 2023. Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images

Although it needs further verification, several Western media outlets have reported that the CCP executed Qin Gang due to his alleged connections with foreign forces.

Additionally, it has been suggested that some high-ranking CCP officers may have leaked secrets regarding the Rocket Force’s nuclear weapons to the West.

Rocket Force Expectations

The Rocket Force represents CCP’s most modern high-end warfare capability. It possesses a wide range of medium- and long-range ballistic missiles and cruise missiles equipped with conventional or nuclear warheads.

Hefty investments in the Rocket Force inevitably accompany the CCP’s drive to develop high-technology equipment. The CCP has touted two hypersonic missiles developed by the Rocket Force as “carrier killer” and “Guam Express,” claiming it can attack the U.S. Pacific fleet and its nuclear-tipped ICBMs (intercontinental ballistic missiles) are directly aimed at the U.S. mainland.

The Rocket Force is the centerpiece of the CCP’s anti-intervention/area denial strategy. It is also what the United States calls a major competitor in high-end conflicts with the CCP.

The October report of the U.S. Congressional Commission on the Strategic Situation made two critical observations about the Chinese nuclear weapons buildup: first, the United States will soon face the threat of not one but two atomic rivals, with both communist China and Russia ambitiously attempting to change their international status through nuclear weapons; and second, that the CCP will be roughly on par with the United States in terms of the number of deployed warheads, or worse, by the mid-2030s.

The U.S. Pentagon’s 2023 report states that as of May 2023, the CCP has over 500 nuclear warheads on alert, and by 2030, this number will exceed 1,000. This enormous expansion means that the Rocket Force has been a focus of Chinese investment in the past and will be for years to come.

China's DF-41 nuclear-capable intercontinental ballistic missiles are seen during a military parade at Tiananmen Square in Beijing, on Oct. 1, 2019. Greg Baker/AFP via Getty Images

No Ability to Launch a War

Amid significant officialdom turmoil, the fighting will of the Rocket Force has been dealt another severe blow, and the actual combat effectiveness of the force is highly questionable.

A rare critical report in the Sept. 15 issue of the CCP military newspaper said that one of the Rocket Force’s units had performed poorly in a field test of an exercise and “shortcomings” in combat readiness at the armed force overseeing conventional and nuclear missiles.

The Rocket Force’s basic units have also admitted bottlenecks in their training and readiness.

Nevertheless, the CCP’s Rocket Force has been devastated, either by the removal of dozens of core leadership cadres, by personnel turmoil that has led to war-weariness and instability, by the lack of professional background in the new leadership team, by the potential consequences and far-reaching implications of the problems left behind by the removed personnel, or by the leakage of nuclear weapons secrets that have led to strategic failure.

Each of these wounds is severe, and they likely have a long-term impact on the combat effectiveness of this unit.

Furthermore, the ongoing internal military purge within the rocket force is expected to persist and expand in scope. This shakeup may impede the army’s return to normalcy for years.

The seriously “wounded” Rocket Force has dampened the tone of the CCP’s armed unification of Taiwan. At a summit of U.S.-China leaders in November, China told U.S. President Joe Biden that it had no plans to attack Taiwan shortly, including 2027 or 2035—this may not be a smoke bomb of the CCP to fool Taiwan and the United States.

The CCP’s air and naval forces may continue to harass Taiwan, but these are just gray area games and do not mean that the CCP has sufficient strength and determination to invade Taiwan. Without the Rocket Force to launch an offensive and block the U.S. forces in the Pacific, the CCP could not even set up a first wave of attacks with the air and naval forces alone.

The weakened Rocket Force cannot ensure a  land-based conventional strike force when the CCP launches a sustained attack on Taiwan while keeping U.S. forces out of range.

For at least the next few years, the CCP may have little power to wage an all-out war, even one doomed to failure, with Taiwan, the United States, and regional partners in the Western Pacific.