After months of intense speculation and official reticence, China has finally confirmed its two former defense ministers who vanished from public view last year had been under investigation for corruption.
Their dramatic downfall has exposed deep-rooted alleged deceit in key sectors of Chinese leader Xi Jinping's military modernization drive despite his decade-long war on graft, raising questions about the country's combat readiness at a time of heightened geopolitical tensions.
Li Shangfu, who was drastically ousted as defense minister in October after only seven months on the job, and Wei Fenghe, who served from 2018 to 2023, were expelled from the ruling Communist Party following the investigations, with both cases handed over to military prosecutors for charges, state media reported Thursday.
The duo are the biggest heads to roll yet in a sweeping purge of China's defense establishment since last summer, which has felled more than a dozen senior generals and executives from the military-industrial complex.
The turmoil in the upper ranks of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) comes as leader Xi Jinping is seeking to make China's armed forces stronger, more combat-ready and more aggressive in asserting its disputed territorial claims in the region.
At the height of their careers, former defense ministers Li and Wei often struck a tough tone before the world's top military officials. At successive regional security forums, the two generals warned the Chinese military would fight "at all costs" if anyone dares to "split" self-governing Taiwan from China. They also fired thinly veiled shots at the United States, vowing to push back against "hegemony" in the disputed South China Sea.
Both promoted under Xi, their removals come despite the Chinese leader's more than decade long signature anti-graft campaign, underscoring the difficulties in preventing corruption at the highest levels of the military, according to analysts.
While Xi's anti-corruption campaign has achieved some success, the lack of proper civilian oversight and an independent legal system means the PLA is reliant on its internal investigators for supervision, said James Char, a research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. "That's difficult, so corruption will definitely continue," he said.
As part of Xi's ambition to transform the PLA into a "world class" fighting force, China has poured billions of dollars into buying and upgrading equipment. Xi has also built up the Rocket Force, an elite branch overseeing the country's fast-expanding arsenal of nuclear and ballistic missiles.
Most of the generals dismissed or disappeared without explanation last year were linked to the Rocket Force or military equipment, including Li and Wei.
Before becoming Defense Minister, Li headed the PLA's Equipment Development Department for five years. An engineer by training, the 66-year-old spent decades launching rockets and satellites in southwest China before being promoted to the PLA headquarters to deal with military equipment procurement.
Wei, 70, was the inaugural commander of the Rocket Force. In late 2015, it was elevated by Xi into a full service from the PLA's former missile arm, the Second Artillery Corps, where Wei had worked for decades. Wei's two successors at the Rocket Force have also been purged.
The allegations against Li laid out in the announcement by the party's 24-member Politburo clearly point to corruption in the procurement of weapons.
Keep reading about the generals' downfall.
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