Following a dramatic leadership reshuffle in the Rocket Force, Chinese authorities recently arrested several key members of military enterprises affiliated with the China National Nuclear Corporation (CNNC), a leading military enterprise with close ties to the Rocket Force Engineering University, the main training base for Rocket Force officers.
A China expert believes that this results from Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping’s widening military purge.
The regime announced that Wu Xiujiang, former chairman of CNNC Environmental Protection Co., and Zhong Hongliang, former chairman of CNNC Shaanxi Uranium Concentration Co., were under investigation.
Yet Another Military Purge
Lai Jianping, a former Beijing lawyer and the Canadian chairman of the Civil Human Rights Front (CHRF), believes that the arrests of the two CNNC-affiliated executives are another move by Xi to purge the military.In an interview with The Epoch Times on Jan. 20, Mr. Lai said that Xi is countering threats to his dictatorship and is trying to establish his authority by cleaning up the military.
Mr. Lai said he believes that Xi is extremely worried about the existence of two forces within the military—those who hold different political views from his and those deemed not loyal enough.
“In the military, even among high-ranking generals, there isn’t a cohesive stance. There are significant differences in political beliefs. Some may disagree with Xi’s views, akin to political opposition or dissenters, thus posing a significant threat to Xi,” Mr. Lai said.
“There are also those who might share similar political views, but they may not be Xi’s loyalists, and their personal allegiance to Xi might not be strong. Therefore, all these individuals become targets for Xi’s purges,” he said.
“Xi can’t reveal these reasons openly, so he uses anti-corruption as a guise to carry out these purges.”
Strategic Collaboration
CNNC and Rocket Force Engineering University signed a strategic cooperation agreement in June 2019, which initiated deepening cooperation in areas such as the joint cultivation of talent, the exchange of cutting-edge technologies, and the sharing of laboratory resources.Located in Xi'an, the capital city of Shaanxi Province, the Rocket Force Engineering University is a multi-branch advanced military academy. It is also China’s only higher military institution that cultivates command and technical talent for the regime’s strategic missile forces. It is the main base for training cadre officers for the Rocket Force.
The Rocket Force is the CCP’s so-called “ace army,” which is mainly responsible for managing land-based nuclear missiles and conventional ballistic missiles.
Rampant Corruption
Chinese authorities announced on Dec. 29 that nine military generals had been disqualified by the National People’s Congress (NPC), including three generals and at least four lieutenant generals, mainly from the Rocket Force and the Central Military Commission’s Equipment Development Department.These nine disqualified generals held positions in the Standing Committee of the NPC. It is expected that there must be other military leaders outside the NPC who are also currently under investigation, and their names may be disclosed sometime later.
Although the official announcement did not explain their dismissal, they were allegedly involved in equipment procurement corruption.
Sources familiar with the matter told Bloomberg earlier this month that there was widespread corruption within the Rocket Force and the entire national defense industrial base.
One of the sources said a U.S. intelligence assessment cited several examples of corruption in the Chinese military, including missiles that were loaded with water instead of fuel and missile silos with defective lids that hinder effective launching.
According to the sources, the U.S. assessment concluded that corruption within the CCP’s military is so rampant that U.S. officials now consider Xi to be “less likely to contemplate major military action in the coming years than would otherwise have been the case.”
