China expels top military commanders in latest anticorruption purge

According to the Chinese Defense Ministry, two of the country’s highest-ranking officers and seven other senior military personnel have been fired from the country’s ruling Communist Party and military on suspicion of grave misconduct related to corruption.

The latest senior military officials to be targeted in a corruption campaign in the People’s Liberation Army are He Weidong, the country’s second-highest-ranking general, and navy admiral Miao Hua, the former leader of the Chinese military.

Since the Cultural Revolution of 1966-1976, General He has been removed as the Central Military Commission’s sitting commander.

Since March, he hasn’t been seen in public, and Chinese authorities haven’t previously made any public inquiries into his activities.

General He, Admiral Miao, and the other seven senior military officers were charged with “seriously violating Party discipline and are suspected of serious duty-related crimes involving an extremely large amount of money” in the announcement of their expulsion on Friday.

Zhang Xiaogang, a spokesman for the Defense Ministry, stated in a statement that the alleged crimes were “of a grave nature, with extremely harmful consequences” and praised the purge as a “significant achievement in the Party and military’s anticorruption campaign.

He, 68, was removed from the military because he was also a member of the Politburo, the second-highest echelon of the ruling Communist Party, which was made up of members of the group.

He was the third-powerful commander in the People’s Liberation Army and was regarded as a close friend of Xi Jinping, the army’s commander-in-chief. He was one of only two vice-chairmen of the Central Military Commission.

Admiral Miao was previously fired from the commission in June after being the subject of a “grave violation of discipline” investigation.

The Communist Party’s Central Committee, an elite body of 200 or more senior officials, is scheduled to hold its Fourth Plenum in Beijing just days before the announcement of the expulsions.

The meeting, which will begin on Monday, is anticipated to formalize more personnel decisions, including those regarding the expulsion and replacement of Central Committee members.

He Hongjun, a former senior official at the PLA Political Work Department, Wang Xiubin of the Central Military Commission’s Joint Operations Command Centre, former Eastern Theatre Command commander Lin Xiangyang, and two former PLA Army and Navy political commissars, are the other military personnel named with He and Miao.

Several of these officials have been hidden from the public eye for several months, according to observers.

Wang Chunning, a former leader of the People’s Armed Police, was removed from the country’s legislature last month along with three other PLA generals.

This “type of shake-up” in the Chinese military leadership has now happened so frequently, according to Ja Ian Chong, associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore.

According to Chong, “it seems to be a part of the Xi Jinping’s rule’s progression,”