Anew wave of purges has engulfed the senior leadership of China’s military, the People’s Liberation Army. Since the 20th National Party Congress in October 2022,
more than 20 senior PLA officers from all four services—the army, navy, air force, and rocket force—have disappeared from public view or been removed from their posts.
The absences of other generals have also been reported, which could foreshadow additional purges.
Most notably, since the fall of 2023, three of the six uniformed members of the party’s Central Military Commission,
the top body of the Chinese Communist Party charged with overseeing the armed forces, have been removed from their posts. The first to fall was Defense Minister Li Shangfu,
who was removed in October 2023 and expelled from the CCP in June 2024. Then, this past November, Miao Hua, the director of the CMC’s Political Work Department,
which manages personnel and party affairs, was suspended for “serious violations of discipline” before being formally removed from the CMC last month.
And most recently, the Financial Times reported that He Weidong, the second-ranked vice chair who has not appeared in public since early March, had been purged.
Never before has half the CMC been dismissed in such a short period. Even stranger is the fact that all three generals had previously been promoted by Chinese leader Xi Jinping;
they were appointed to the CMC itself in 2022, after Xi consolidated his control over the party at the 20th Party Congress.
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