The Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China (CPC) recently issued newly revised “Regulations on the Work of the Disciplinary Inspection Commission of the Communist Party of China Army”, vowing to unswervingly promote the army’s party style and clean government construction and anti-corruption struggle. Commentators believe that through nearly a decade of high-pressure anti-corruption, Xi Jinping’s goal has basically been achieved. On the centennial of the Communist Party of China’s founding, he has solidified military power and brought China’s military firmly under his control.
Military anti-corruption moves continue
Just a month ago, the Central Military Commission issued the newly revised “Regulations on the Work of the Disciplinary Inspection Commission of the Communist Party of China Army,” which will come into effect on April 1, 2021. Xi Jinping’s fierce anti-corruption campaign since the 18th National Congress has recently focused on weapons manufacturing and the military industrial system.
On April 29, the Chinese National People’s Congress announced that Song Xue, the former deputy chief of staff of the Navy, was removed from his position as a delegate to the 13th National People’s Congress, elected by the People’s Liberation Army, for allegedly committing serious disciplinary violations.
Song Xue, 62, is a native of Shandong province and a Rear Admiral in the People’s Liberation Army. Song is best known as the deputy commander-in-chief of the J-15 carrier aircraft takeoff and landing test mission on China’s first aircraft carrier, the Liaoning. Song Xue was the vice minister of the Navy’s equipment department, and had a long history of contact with the military industry system, holding the power of procurement.
At the same time as Song Xue’s fall, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and State Supervision Commission released news that Yin Jiaxu, former party secretary and chairman of the board of China National Weapons Industry Corporation, was under review and supervisory investigation for alleged serious disciplinary violations.
Last year, there were also “tigers” who served in the China Arms Industry Corporation were beaten. 2020 May 12, the former Secretary of the Party Group of China Shipbuilding Industry Corporation, Chairman Hu Wenming was investigated after nearly two years of retirement.
“Military corruption is certainly not only the corruption of officers, military enterprises are also the same. Corruption is not only a generational problem, so it is impossible to eradicate. When the big tiger is hit, there may be other tigers. But Xi Jinping has sent a very clear message that he will not tolerate corruption.” Einar Tangen, a Beijing-based current affairs commentator, told Voice of America this.
Looking back at the history of the Communist Party’s military fight against corruption, Xi Jinping, the Communist Party president and chairman of the Central Military Commission, has made a major effort to tackle official corruption in China since he took power at the 18th Communist Party Congress in 2012, with military corruption at the top of the list. Corruption in the military has a long history, reaching its peak under Jiang Hu. Xi Jinping is determined to build a reliable force loyal to the top leadership by overhauling the military system and punishing corruption to establish military prestige.
Corruption has a long history
In the mid-1980s, when China was still in an economic backwater, military spending was relatively tight. To subsidize the military, the Central Military Commission made an important decision in 1985 to allow the People’s Liberation Army to engage in commercial trade, the so-called “military to feed the military”. Under the leadership of the three headquarters of the Central Military Commission of the Communist Party of China, all military groups, provincial military districts and military sub-districts entered the business world and expanded their business scope. Military interests swelled rapidly, involving thousands of companies and businesses in everything from hotels, nightclubs, and dance halls to airlines, pharmaceuticals, cell phone networks, stockbrokers, and electronics companies.
The proceeds of the military business did improve training grounds and camp conditions, and solved the problem of financial constraints, but the resulting corruption also grew, especially in the rampant smuggling by the military in the south coast of East China and the north. At the same time, engaging in business distracted leading cadres and organs at all levels, and to a certain extent weakened the army’s ability to perform its functions and combat effectiveness, and military enterprises inevitably competed with the people for profits, which inevitably affected military-civilian relations.
In the early 1990s, Jiang Zemin, then chairman of the Military Commission, and other leaders had to call a halt to the military’s business operations, where corruption was prevalent. From banning combat troops from doing business, to divesting local affiliated enterprises, to stopping all business activities of the military. But the military, which had already tasted the sweetness, secretly resisted, or changed its face, or continued to do business in disguise.
From the mid-to-late 1980s until the 1990s, the national smuggling frenzy was like a flood, bringing serious losses to port tax revenue, and the military was naturally not a paradise. The military smuggled everything, even drugs. According to a BBC report on March 28, 2001, Philippine National Security Adviser Roilo Golez said that about one-fifth of the country’s annual “methamphetamine,” worth about a billion dollars, comes from China’s coastal provinces, and that the drug chain includes members of the Chinese Communist Party military.
Robert Lawrence Kuhn, author of “The Biography of Jiang Zemin,” writes that the involvement of military enterprises in smuggling costs China about $12-25 billion a year.
In July 1998, Jiang Zemin called a meeting of the four headquarters of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in Beijing to implement the spirit of the National Conference on Combating Smuggling and to stop the army’s smuggling activities. In the same month, Jiang Zemin announced that the central government had decided that the military and the Armed Police Force should seriously clean up the various business companies run by their units, and that they would no longer engage in business activities. However, of the approximately 20,000 military-owned enterprises, less than 5,000 had been handed over to the local authorities by the end of 1998.
I.W. Deng, a former editor of the Journal of the Party School of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and now a member of the China Strategic Analysis think tank in the United States, told the Voice of America: “The military-run enterprises, after they are decoupled, become so-called private enterprises. These enterprises will definitely be transferred to the control of military personnel who have close ties with the enterprises. These people are nominally out of uniform, but they have a very close relationship with the military and still serve the military. So superficially decoupled, but not in the full sense of the decoupling.”
Army corruption only retreats, not advances
In late 2001, the People’s Republic of China officially joined the World Trade Organization after 15 years of negotiations. Traditional smuggling activities have not been eliminated, and new scattered smuggling activities have started to appear again. And the methods are becoming more and more covert.
From 2000 to 2003, the central government adjusted the basic salary of military personnel four times in a row, and also established a salary incentive system and a post allowance system for emergency troops to improve the treatment of basic officers. “In June 2011, Hu Jintao, then Chairman of the Military Commission, approved the “Regulations on the Integrity of Leading Party Members and Cadres in the Military” issued by the Central Military Commission. But all of these systems and regulations, like other CCP integrity systems and regulations, have failed to curb the high incidence of corruption in the military.
Timothy Health of the RAND think tank, who is familiar with the dynamics of the Chinese military, told VOA, “In the Chinese military, bribery for promotion is the same as in other government agencies, but military corruption has its own characteristics. Procurement positions in the military are often the most corrupt because they are often responsible for purchasing large quantities of supplies, such as food, clothing, equipment and weapons. They can take these purchases into their personal pockets or sell them for profit.”
“The Deng Xiaoping years were about getting rich quick, and in that context, much corruption was condoned. Under Jiang Zemin, China’s economy developed rapidly, but the Communist Party did not establish an effective monitoring system to curb corruption, so the whole problem became more and more serious. Although Hu Jintao tried to fight corruption during his rule, he was more cautious and did not take a bold step to punish corruption, so military corruption under his rule could be said to have only gone backward,” Heath concluded.
Communist Party takes anti-corruption storm
Since he became China’s top party, government and military leader in 2012, Xi Jinping has launched a sweeping fight against corruption. The military has been the first to bear the brunt. According to official Chinese media reports, between the 18th and 19th Communist Party Congresses, Xi’s first five-year term, more than 4,000 cases were filed and reviewed in China’s military, and more than 13,000 people were disciplined, with at least 69 military-grade “tigers” falling, involving the Central Military Commission, the former headquarters units, the former seven military regions, military schools and research institutions, various military branches and the armed forces. The tigers have been disciplined by the Central Military Commission, the former headquarters units, the former seven military regions, military schools and research institutions, various military branches and armed police forces. Xu Caihou and Guo Boxiong, once vice chairmen of the Military Commission, died of bladder cancer during the investigation, and one was sentenced to life in prison.
I.W. Deng had this to say about Xi’s motives for fighting corruption: “Xi Jinping has a strong sense of mission. He believes that the world was built by their old master, and in this case, if he does not want to lose the party and the country, he must do something. He believes he can make a difference and save the Communist Party from the quagmire of corruption. Hu Jintao comes from a civilian background, while Xi Jinping is a descendant of the first generation of Communist Party leaders who fought for the country, and he has an innate so-called identification with the regime, so his approach is different.”
Meanwhile, Xi Jinping made a big deal of the largest military reform since the founding of New China between 2014-2016. In addition to disarming 300,000 troops, he set up a leading army agency, a rocket army, a strategic support force, and headed the newly established “Central Military Commission Leading Group for Deepening Defense and Military Reform.” Xi Jinping has changed the previous structure of the military: replacing the seven major war zones with five major war zones, changing the ratio of military branches, reducing the number of army personnel, replacing almost all of the former group army chiefs, and devoting more resources to the air force, navy and missile forces.
“Xi Jinping has made the biggest overhaul of China’s military since its founding, something that even Deng Xiaoping’s era has never seen. A hundred years ago the Communist Party started with armed uprisings, and a hundred years later, the Party wants to ensure that the military serves the Party and takes on the duty of defending the country,” said Aina Tanguen.
In October 2017, the 19th Communist Party Congress adopted a new version of the “Constitution of the Communist Party of China,” which not only emphasizes the “absolute” leadership of the CPC over the PLA and other people’s armed forces, but also includes a special clause on “implementing Xi Jinping Thought on Strengthening the Military” was also added.
On Jan. 1, 2018, the Armed Police Force, which had been under the leadership of the CCP’s Political and Legal Committee, was directly subordinated to the Central Military Commission and placed under Xi’s unified command.
“Xi’s military anti-corruption is of course very important to him for several reasons,” Heath analyzed, “First Xi wants the military to be his reliable enforcer of authority. If military positions can be bought and sold, then it is conceivable that if top military officials are bought by rich people who don’t like Xi, they could easily stage a coup. So for the sake of personal power, this kind of corruption, which can sell everything for money, must be eradicated. At the same time, Xi Jinping wants a capable and effective military, which is related to the international prestige of China and the Communist Party.”
Expert: Anti-corruption aims have been achieved
After the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (19th Congress) in 2017, Xi Jinping proposed to strive to basically modernize the national defense and military by 2035 and to build the PLA into a world-class military by the middle of this century, and again called for the complete cessation of all paid services in the military by the end of 2018.
In recent years, the 13th National People’s Congress has been terminated the qualifications of five military personnel, in addition to Song Xue, who was removed from his post in April this year, there are also the former political member of the Hainan Military Region Ye Qing, the former political member of the Jiangsu Military Region Meng Zhongkang, the former deputy commander and chief of staff of the PLA Strategic Support Force Rao Kaixun, the former deputy commander of the Army in the Western War Zone Xu Xianghua. In the official news, Ye Qing, Meng Zhongkang, Rao Kaixun, Xu Xianghua are “due to serious disciplinary violations”, while Song Xue is “suspected of serious disciplinary violations”. So far the above former military cadres have not been prosecuted.
According to Deng, Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign has two objectives. First, China’s corruption problem is very serious, both in the military and in the official circles, and as the Communist Party itself says: If we don’t fight corruption, the Party will perish! Therefore, the fight against corruption is to save the party. Secondly, the fight against corruption also helps to consolidate Xi’s own power.
He said, “We know that when he became general secretary in 2012, he was elected with little merit. He needs to be able to subdue others, especially those who look down on him. The best means to do that is to start with anti-corruption. Establishing authority through anti-corruption. He used the big purpose to make excuses for the small purpose, seemingly out of public interest, but actually out of selfishness. He said it was for the Communist Party and no one could refute it. This established the legitimacy for his anti-corruption. When his anti-corruption fight goes on, his power will naturally be strengthened. On the one hand, all CCP officials, including the military, have unclean asses. So the only way to be slaughtered in this situation is to be obediently slaughtered by Xi. So the big purpose is to save the party, and the small purpose is to establish authority.”
In this regard, Heath also believes the big picture is set for Xi’s military anti-corruption efforts. “From the information coming out of Beijing, the biggest threat to Xi Jinping and to the party really comes from those top officials with extensive connections who once could challenge Xi’s authority. Now that they have been brought down, the corresponding network of those connections has disintegrated. It is the day-to-day corruption that Xi Jinping now has to deal with. But because of China’s system, it is impossible to eradicate this corruption or reduce it to the level of, say, Singapore. But on the issue of removing the big tigers, Xi’s goal is achieved. So the next anti-corruption campaign, although it will not stop, will be slower and smaller in scale.”
Deng stressed, “He has achieved his goal. Through anti-corruption his power has been unchallenged and his authority has reached its zenith, higher than Deng Xiaoping’s. In terms of saving the party it has also been achieved. The image of the Communist Party in the hearts of the people was repaired. National power was also further enhanced in his hands, so both purposes were achieved.”
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