He Weidong, a vice-chairman of the Chinese Central Military Commission, vowed in the Two Sessions in early March to “crackdown on fake combat capabilities.” However, the phrase has since vanished from the Chinese social media platform Weibo and major state-run media outlets. Analysts speculate that it exposes Chinese military strength as being exaggerated.
According to minutes of a military delegates’ meeting at the annual Two Sessions, Mr. He mentioned the phrase “crackdown on fake combat capabilities.”
Since then, the phrase has been absent from online database searches such as Weibo, Xinhua News, CCTV, China Daily, and the Chinese military’s sole news portal, China Military Online.
A South China Morning Post (SCMP) report indicated that the “fake combat capabilities” could relate to the procurement of flawed equipment and the military performance on an actual battlefield.
The report also mentioned the recent sweeping purge of corrupt military officials, particularly from the rocket force that oversees the country’s nuclear arsenal and the equipment procurement units.
Bloomberg reported in January that U.S. intelligence “cited several examples of the impact of graft, including missiles filled with water instead of fuel and vast fields of missile silos in western China with lids that don’t function in a way that would allow the missiles to launch effectively.”
Shen Ming-Shih, Director of National Security Research based in Taiwan, analyzed that “fake combat capabilities” could go beyond fabricated battlefield training, according to a report on Voice of America (VOA).
Mr. Shen told VOA that it could potentially signify the exaggerated capabilities of Chinese-made weapons, such as the fifth-generation fighter, the J-20, which was claimed to outperform the U.S. F-22, and the superiority of an electromagnetic catapult system on China’s third aircraft carrier, the Fujian, over the U.S. Ford-class carriers.
He said that the look-alike weapons are also “fake combat capabilities,” while corruption is a much bigger issue for the Chinese military.
Chieh Chung, a researcher at the Association of Strategic Foresight, believed the Chinese military had faked its combat capabilities even though the Chinese leader Xi Jinping demanded military reform in 2015. “The military continued to issue false reports to deceive the Central Military Commission, the equipment and technological developments not meeting senior officials’ expectations, and possibly involving illegal exchanges of interests,” Mr. Chieh told VOA.
Since last year, Xi has continued his extensive purge of the military, especially targeting senior officials overseeing the nuclear arsenal and equipment procurement departments. Apart from the dismissal of former Minister of National Defense Li Shangfu in October last year, nine military generals were stripped of their qualifications as the military delegates to its rubber stamp legislature last year, including two former commanders of the Rocket Force, Li Yuchao and Zhou Yaning, former Rocket Force deputy commander and chief of staff Li Chuanguang, former Rocket Force Equipment Minister Lu Hong, and Zhang Zhenzhong, former deputy commander of the Rocket Force and later deputy chief of staff of the Joint Staff Department of the Central Military Commission.
Furthermore, the delay in the convening of the third plenary session has led to speculation that it may be related to systemic military corruption.
The CCP has customarily held its third plenary session in October or November, a year after representatives of a new Central Committee are elected.
But it has been more than a year since the 20th national meeting of its rubber stamp legislature in October 2022.
Katsuji Nakazawa, a Tokyo-based senior staff and editorial writer at Nikkei Asia, commented in his article that the delay of the third plenary session could be due to the Chinese economy’s “dire straits.”
However, turmoil in today’s China is not limited to economic policy; it is also making itself felt in politics and diplomacy, as exemplified by the successive dismissals of Foreign Minister Qin Gang and Defense Minister Li Shangfu, Mr. Nakazawa stated. Both Mr. Qin and Mr. Li also served as vice premier-level state councilors.
While the post of defense minister and the two state councilor positions remain vacant, and “if the Xi administration convenes the third plenary session of the 20th Central Committee ‘empty-handed’ in this situation, it would only highlight China’s instability,” said Mr. Nakazawa.
“Given that the dismissed state councilors were hand-picked by Xi Jinping, Xi cannot shirk off his responsibility,” wrote Mr. Zhong in an article for the Chinese-language edition of The Epoch Times.
