Xi Rebuilt the Military to His Liking. Now a Shake-Up Threatens Its Image - New York Times. 07.08.23
- Michael Julien
- Aug 8, 2023
- 3 min read
Updated: Aug 9, 2023
Xi Jinping, China’s leader, set out to clean up the military a decade ago. But now his crown jewel, the missile force, is under a shadow says Chris Buckley.
As Xi Jinping has entrenched his hold on power in China, he has likened himself to a physician, eradicating the toxins of corruption and disloyalty that threaten the rule of the Communist Party. And his signature project for over a decade has been bringing to heel the once extravagantly corrupt military leadership.
But recent upheavals at high levels of the People’s Liberation Army forces suggest that Mr. Xi’s cure has not endured. Last week, he abruptly replaced two top generals in the Rocket Force, an unexplained shake-up that suggests suspicions of graft or other misconduct in the sensitive arm of the military that manages conventional and nuclear missiles.
“Obviously, something has gone wrong in the system, which is probably related to discipline and corruption,” said Andrew N.D. Yang, an expert on the Chinese military who was formerly a senior Taiwanese defense official. “It’s like a virus in the system that has come back. It’s a deep-rooted problem, and it has survived in the system.”
A scandal involving the top brass of the armed forces would be a setback for Mr. Xi, who has taken pride in turning the 98 million-strong Communist Party and the Chinese military into unquestioning enforcers of his rule. Days before the generals were ousted, Mr. Xi removed the foreign minister, Qin Gang, another troublesome dismissal for Mr. Xi, who had elevated Mr. Qin as a trusted enforcer of his policies.
The signs of misconduct are likely to reinforce Mr. Xi’s conviction that China’s officials can be kept from straying only with intense scrutiny and pressure from above. That strategy includes subjecting cadres to constant inspections by party investigators; campaigns to instill loyalty to the Communist Party and to Mr. Xi; and to dismissals and arrests.
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In Mr. Xi’s view, “you never get to the point where the danger recedes,” said Joseph Torigian, an assistant professor at American University in Washington who studies elite politics in China. “Even when you have an absolutely dominant leader, that doesn’t mean you don’t have churn in the system.”
When Mr. Xi came to power in 2012, he moved urgently to clean out corruption and lax discipline in the People’s Liberation Army, subduing potential rivals and centralizing power around himself — an overhaul that set an example for how he has transformed China as a whole.
In 2014, Mr. Xi gathered hundreds of senior officers at the same site where Mao Zedong had extended his sway over the revolutionary Red Army. Mr. Xi warned them that the military was rotting from within. Investigators had exposed Xu Caihou, a former vice chairman of the Central Military Commission — the party’s arm for controlling the armed forces — who had amassed a fortune from bribery; a general who hoarded jewels and cash in his homes and also consulted fortune tellers; officers buying and selling promotions; and some even selling secret information.
Mr. Xi was also warning of deepening rivalry with the United States, and he told the generals that the internal decay could be disastrous. “What starts as decadence will slide toward destruction,” he said, citing an ancient Chinese aphorism.
In the years that followed, Mr. Xi reorganized the People’s Liberation Army, bulldozing past potential opposition. Dozens of senior officers were convicted of corruption, and the buying and selling of promotions, once common, receded. Mr. Xi instituted new rules to cement his powers as the chairman of the Central Military Commission and commander in chief.
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Amy Chang Chien contributed reporting.
Chris Buckley is The Times’s chief correspondent in China, where he has lived for most of the past 30 years after growing up in Sydney, Australia. Before joining The Times in 2012, he was a correspondent in Beijing for Reuters. More about Chris Buckley
A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 8, 2023, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Xi’s Shake-Up Imperils Image Of the Military. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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