(TibetanReview.net, Jun28’24) — China has used especially harsh words in announcing the expulsion from the party of the country’s two immediate former defence ministers while also underlining their political disloyalty, noted the scmp.com Jun 28, citing observers and China’s official Xinhua news agency.
In an unprecedented move, the party’s 24-person Politburo decided to launch corruption investigations into Wei Fenghe and his successor Li Shangfu, and expelled both from the party, the report said, citing statements on the decision released by state news agency Xinhua on Jun 27.
Both have also been stripped of their positions as generals and membership of the People’s Liberation Army and will reportedly face criminal charges from military prosecutors too.
Li was sacked from his job in October, just seven months after he became defence minister while Wei held the position from 2018 to 2023.
Wei had also become the first chief of the rocket force when it was formed in 2015 as part of a major military overhaul. His two successors as heads of the force, Zhou Yaning and Li Yuchao, were both ousted last year.
The statements were quoted as saying the two former ministers “betrayed the trust of the party and the CMC [Central Military Commission], seriously polluted the political environment of the military, and caused great damage to the party’s cause, national defence and military construction, as well as the image of its senior leaders”.
The statements were stated to have singled Wei out for degrading the “political ecosystem” of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), and Li for contaminating the PLA’s military equipment industry.
Observers have drawn attention to the especially harsh wording in the brief statements of accusations against the two men. The wording is much harsher than the accusations previously made against Xu Caihou and Guo Boxiong, two former vice-chairmen of the CMC – China’s top military command body – who were sacked for corruption during the first term of President Xi Jinping, a political scientist from Nanjing university, who asked not to be named due to sensitivity of the matter, has said.
“You can almost tell there is a feeling of ‘how dare you let me down on the most important job!’”
The analyst has added that Beijing’s frustration may have been compounded because unlike Guo and Xu, both Wei and Li were promoted to their most senior position under Xi.
He has noted that beside the usual short description of the alleged corruption, the Xinhua announcement underlined Wei and Li’s political disloyalty.
The military, the bastion of the party’s political power, has become a prime target for Xi’s anti-graft campaign, and Beijing has said proudly that more Chinese generals have been sacked for corruption under Xi than were killed in decades of war in the 20th century, the report noted.
The official announcements were cited as saying that while Wei Fenghe was accused of taking bribes, his successor Li Shangfu was accused of both taking and giving bribes, raising new questions.
“It would be interesting to ask to whom did Li, who was already a top brass in the military, give money to,” the Nanjing-based analyst has said.
The sacking of such a large number of senior defence officials is seen as a sign of the strength of President Xi’s control over the military.
“Xi Jinping’s control over the PLA is stronger than that of any of his predecessors, even Mao Zedong, if we look at the reforms he has been able to effect throughout the PLA since late 2015,” James Char, a research fellow with the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore, has said.
While some observers have argued that corruption in the PLA has exposed weaknesses in its military abilities, some have argued it could actually improve the force’s capacity to fight, the report said.