The Chinese Defense Ministry has announced that a top military official has been suspended
According to CNN, the Chinese Defense Ministry said that a senior military officer had been suspended and was being investigated for corruption. The move coincides with Chinese President Xi Jinping expanding a purge in the military’s highest echelons.
According to CNN, Chinese Defense Ministry spokesperson Wu Qian stated at a news conference on Thursday that Admiral Miao Hua, a member of the influential Central Military Commission (CMC), which is directed by Xi and is China’s top military body, has been placed under investigation for “serious violations of discipline”—a euphemism for corruption.
The head of the CMC’s Political Work Department is Admiral Miao Hua, 69. In the 1990s and early 2000s, while Xi Jinping was a local official in Fujian, he was a political officer in the army and is regarded as a close protégé of Xi.
The Rocket Force, an elite division in charge of China’s nuclear and conventional missiles, has been the target of Xi Jinping’s campaign against corruption in the PLA since 2023.
According to a CNN story, Xi’s action led to the removal of a number of high-ranking generals, including Wei Fenghe, the party’s predecessor, and Li Shangfu, China’s previous defense minister, who were ejected in June due to corruption charges.
The continuous changes in the military’s top echelons coincide with Xi Jinping’s goal of strengthening, preparing, and enhancing China’s military’s ability to impose its disputed territorial claims in the area.
China has spent billions of dollars on equipment acquisition and modernization in an effort to fulfill Xi’s goal of making the PLA a “world class” combat force. In the military-industrial complex, more than a dozen senior military officials and aerospace businessmen have been barred from public service since last summer.
The majority of the expelled generals, notably Li Shangfu and Wei Fenghe, had ties to the Rocket Force or military hardware.
Li vanished from the public eye last summer, only months after taking over his command and weeks after the Rocket Force’s leadership was abruptly reorganized. He was abruptly dismissed from office in October, and Dong Jun, China’s current defense minister, took his place. But in a significant departure from prior years’ norms, Dong was not named to the CMC.
As the public face of military diplomacy with foreign nations, the position of Chinese Defense Minister is mostly ceremonial.
Dong, an admiral and former top commander of the PLA Navy, is seen as having political support from Miao, the Chinese senior military officer under investigation.
Miao, a native of Fujian, advanced through the military’s political bureaus. In 2014, two years after Xi Jinping took office, Miao was elevated to the PLA Navy’s political commissar post, which coincided with Dong’s tenure as the Navy’s deputy head of staff.
In 2017, Miao was once again elevated to the position of director of the Political Work Department of the CMC. Since taking office in 2012, Xi Jinping has made eliminating corruption and disloyalty a defining feature of his governance, and the steps taken against senior military officers suggest that the effort is far from done, CNN said.
Lyle Morris, a fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s foreign policy and national security division, wrote on X that “Corruption in China’s military is not a case of a ‘few bad apples.'” Compared to most other military organizations worldwide, the PLA involves ‘doing business’ to a much larger degree, where significant acts of corruption and nepotism may be exposed by the rule of law and checks and balances.
He said, “Despite Xi’s best efforts, corruption in the PLA will endure and bedevil Xi and his successor for the foreseeable future.”
