Another One Bites the Dust
Miao Hua's suspension is now out there – so what's the paper trail?
Guarding the Great Wall: The Purge Continues
Anushka Saxena
On November 28, 2024, Colonel Wu Qian, Director of the Information Bureau of and spokesperson for China’s Ministry of National Defense (MoND) announced that Miao Hua, a member of the Central Military Commission (CMC) and Director of the Political Work Department with the rank of General, is suspected of serious disciplinary violations. He further added at the widely covered press conference that the decision to suspend Miao Hua for investigation followed intense deliberation by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC).
Miao’s suspension comes at the heels of a report by the American media platform Financial Times (dated November 27) that Chinese Defence Minister Dong Jun too, may have been placed under investigation for corruption, which seemed a bit too quick to have been true given that just on November 20 and 21, Dong was in Vientiane, Lao PDR, to attend the 11th ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting-Plus. Normally, in the Chinese system, public presence or absence is a marker for whether an official is still in the safety net or not, vis-à-vis corruption, disloyalty, or other grave violations of part discipline. One would remember that in the cases of former Foreign Minister Qin Gang and former Defence Minister Li Shangfu, their respective public absences before the stories of their official dismissal broke out, were 1 and 2 months. For now, suspicions regarding the investigation against Dong have been quashed by Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning in one of her regular press conferences (either November 27 or 28; the question regarding the same has been removed from the press releases), where she reportedly said that FT was “grasping winds and shadows” (“捕风捉影”).
But it is clear that a greater game is afoot, one where there is a clear internal strife within the CMC, and where Miao and Dong’s corruption-related investigations may be interlinked. This is not just a crisis in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) – it is the entire Chinese security apparatus house that is on fire.
When Dong was promoted to the post of National Defence Minister in December 2023 as the first DefMin from the Navy, he was expected to step up and fulfill the requirements of combat preparedness in hostile naval theaters – Taiwan Strait, South and East China Seas, and the Red Sea. But internally, his role was highly public-facing, as has always been the case with China’s DefMin, with even the backing of CMC membership lacking in his resumé on authority. Both Li Shangfu and his predecessor Wei Fenghe, now purged for corruption and bribery, were members of the CMC, and the CMC itself used to be bigger than the 6-member organisation it became in 2022 – the pre-2015-reform CMC had 11-15 members as well. Today, with Miao’s suspension, it constitutes only 5 members, and the office of the DefMin stands downgraded given Dong’s non-assignment as a CMC member.
The past two years have seen great churn in the PLA and the CMC. Leading officials from the Rocket Force, the Navy, most theater commands, and the CMC have been put under the radar for discipline-related violations. In the case of Li Shangfu, the corruption was linked to a scandal in the CMC Equipment Development Department (EDD), which he headed between 2017 and 2023. But it seemed clear that there was some factional struggle at play, with those at rungs at a relatively junior level than top officials in the CMC fighting for power and revealing hidden skeletons in the closets of their competitors, even if the latter group were loyalists and protégés of President Xi Jinping. With Miao’s suspension, however, things have escalated to the top, and I suspect that even He Weidong, the Vice-Chair of the CMC, may soon be under the radar.
Here’s a graphic to quickly clarify the structure of the CMC (He Hongjun’s role may be important moving forward, though he is not a member of CMC):
What’s the Network?
Miao was brought up in Fuzhou, Fujian, and had worked there for a long time in the PLA. As head of the Political Work Department as well as a member of the PLA Election Committee, Miao was responsible for quite a number of recommendations for high-ranking posts.
For starters, having served as the Political Commissar of the PLA Navy (PLAN) between December 2014 and September 2017, Miao is highly likely to have cultivated close contact with Dong Jun, who, exactly in December of ‘14, was appointed to the post of Deputy Chief of Staff of the PLAN. Rumour has it, that it was Miao who recommended Dong for the ministerial post in the aftermath of Li Shangfu’s swift removal.
Similarly, Miao is very likely to have been closely associated with Wang Xiubin, former commander of the Southern Theater Command, who only recently disappeared from public view since being removed from the post. Wang’s last few public appearances as commander of the STC have been in the form of foreign consultations in April 2024, first with France’s Commander of the Pacific Ocean and French Polynesian maritime zones Rear Admiral Geoffrey d’Andigne in Beijing on April 25, and then at a virtual meeting organised by the US Indo-Pacific Command in their Hawaii HQ on April 29. The former meeting also went well, as the two sides signed a ‘Framework Document on Conducting Inter-theater Maritime and Air Cooperation Dialogue between the Southern Theater Command of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army and the Pacific Ocean Command of the French Forces’ (中国人民解放军南部战区和法国军队太平洋海区关于开展战区间海上与空中合作对话的框架文件). Now, it is likely that sometime between the ends of April and July 2024, General Wu Yanan was handed the baton.
While Miao and Wang didn’t have any overlapping tenures in a particular province, both have a shared history of having served in the pre-2015-reform 31st Group Army (now the 73rd Group Army of the PLA Eastern Theater Command) based in Fujian. More importantly, Wang had, in the course of his long tenures in Fujian and Zhejiang, cultivated close ties with Xi Jinping, and was, in many ways, a close ally. And given that Miao is a close ally of Xi himself, it is likely Miao and Xi were in agreement when Wang’s name came up for the respective post of Deputy and Commander of the two main naval theaters – the Eastern and Southern Theater Commands.
Similarly, Qin Shengxiang, former Director of the General Office of the CMC, is tied closely to Xi Jinping and Miao Hua, in that he has taken up leadership roles in the navy all his life, and was chosen quickly to succeed Miao in the role of PLAN Political Commissar in 2017. He also served for long in the 38th Group Army (now the 82nd Group Army of the Central Theater Command), whose functioning Xi held close to his heart. Now, since October 2024, he, too, is rumoured to be investigated for corruption.
Fujian all over
Except for Qin’s case, there is a common thread connecting leading officials recently in the limelight for corruption-related scandals – Dong, Wang, and Miao – that they have all, in the past, been associated with each other through their own work, or through Xi Jinping’s work, in Fujian. Commentators such as Cai Shekun, who on November 11 itself informed the public via X.com that Miao had been arrested by “hooded” officials from his residence, has referred to a bunch of these officials as part of a “Fujian gang” in the PLA/ CMC. These can be pitted against the presence of a strong “Shaanxi gang” in the military, led apparently by CMC first vice-chairman Zhang Youxia. If one looks at the split, one realises that Miao Hua and Dong Jun are both a part of the so-called ‘Fujian gang’ (as traced above), and their potential promoter and supporter is none other than CMC second Vice-Chairman, He Weidong. He’s gang all seem to have a naval theater–east coast connection, with a scholar in INDSR (a Taipei-based think tank) also referring to many of them as part of a “Taiwan Strait Gang”.
If one looks at Zhang’s so-called “Shaanxi gang”, CMC member and Discipline Inspection lead Zhang Shengmin figures right on top. He was born in Shaanxi and served with the pre-2015-reform Second Artillery force (now Rocket Force) for a long time, before joining the Discipline Inspection Commission of the CMC as Secretary in 2017. It must be noted that Zhang Shengmin’s beloved Rocket Force has been the subject of a great shakeup in the past few years, with former senior leaders such as commander Li Yuchao and commander Xu Zhongbo having been charged with corruption and serious violation of discipline last year. Both the Zhangs also have a shared history of working with the PLA Army, and it is no surprise that Zhang Shengmin is the CMC’s anti-corruption and discipline investigation czar – a hammer Zhang Youxia may have no trouble wielding.
Two other members of the Shaanxi gang are vital to think about – Li Shangfu and He Hongjun. Li Shangfu’s dishonourable dismissal must have been quite a setback for Zhang Youxia, who was in charge of anointing him for the post of DefMin given Li’s close loyalty to him.
He Hongjun’s case is perhaps the most interesting one going forward. His rise to the ranks as ‘Executive Deputy Director’ (常务副主任) of the CMC PWD is unique, in that the billet of ‘Executive’ DD is quite new given that previously, the PWD has mostly had only ‘Deputy Directors’. In July 2024, He Hongjun was not just promoted to this Executive DD rank, but was also made PLA ‘general’. To go from major general to general in 11 years is relatively quite a rapid rise, given that it took high-rankers like Zhang Youxia and Miao Hua 14 years themselves. Most importantly, He is a native of Shaanxi and had Zhang’s support throughout. And despite the existence of Zhang’s fingerprints all over He’s career, he also carries special merit for Xi Jinping – while Miao Hua was indeed promoted to PWD Director by Xi, his lifelong service in leadership roles was under Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. This is important because in the PLA ecosystem, loyalty to the civilian leader is quite a challenge to establish, and takes time. For He Hongjun, that is not the case, given that his rise through the ranks was all under Xi. If a problematic Miao had to be replaced, who better than He himself?
Lots to think about
He Weidong’s promotion to second VC of the CMC could have been quite a jolt to Zhang Youxia, given he had no CMC positions before this appointment, but did have Xi’s trust from his 31st GA days in Xiamen, when Xi was Fujian party secretary and governor. But Zhang did have top CMC roles, and was only promoted from VC number two to VC number one in 2022. Nonetheless, Zhang remains a highly powerful figure and a close Xi Jinping confidante, given that he was retained as second-in-command after Xi even though he was well past the conventional retirement age of 68 at the time.
Now that He Weidong’s Fujian connection with both Miao Hua and Dong Jun is established, and so is the very high possibility of a power tussle in the topmost ranks of the PLA and CMC, there are a few interesting questions to think about, which, at the moment, can only be answered with rife speculation:
Why was Miao targeted but Dong left off the hook? Is the next target of Zhang Youxia’s potential targeting of the so-called ‘Fujian clique’ He Weidong? Is this a matter of petty revenge by Zhang against the targeting of Rocket Force personnel and Li Shangfu? If so, was Li Shangfu’s corruption unveiled by He Weidong or Miao Hua? And finally, how much will He Hongjun and Zhang Shengmin’s overbearing presence in the CMC as part of the so-called ‘Shaanxi clique’ affect the overall power balance (including in terms of naval power) going forward? One can see why it’s quite an enjoyable thriller-suspense.
However, two things are clear – First, is that in the short run, Xi’s willingness to sacrifice Li Shangfu, Qin Gang, or even Dong Jun, could be seen as a sign of confidence in his position, and the expendable nature of cadres at that level provided goals of modernisation, efficiency, and loyalty remained unmet. If, however, senior CMC officials and close Xi confidantes like He Weidong, Miao Hua, or even Zhang Youxia are sacrificed, then there’s likely a deeper crisis at hand, because it will signal that nobody’s position is secure.
Second, is that Xi is going to have a hard time getting his house in order. As Sheena Chestnut Greitens has argued in her book ‘Dictators and their Secret Police’, authoritarian rulers like Xi face a “coercive dilemma” in which they must defend themselves against two different types of domestic challengers at the same time – the people of the country, and political elites as rivals. To secure one’s position against hostility from the former, leaders like Xi must cultivate close bonds with the latter. And if the latter become rivalrous beyond repair, it gets difficult to keep national affairs intact.
Despite Xi’s best efforts to launch an anti-corruption campaign to keep his loyalists in power, and to cultivate protégés within the tough nuts to crack that are the PLA and the CMC, loyalists are spread across factions, leading to in-fighting. And if tomorrow, more information from within the system reveals that the entire purge campaign was to secure Xi’s position and create unified loyalty to military modernisation, the argument above is rendered weak. But till such a time as that happens, Xi has greater problems that extend beyond just inefficiency and corruption.
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