News Analysis
Despite securing ever-greater nominal authority over the levers of power in communist China, Chinese leader Xi Jinping appears to be facing intractable and growing challenges from within the regime itself.
Over recent years and months several top officers in China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) have been investigated for corruption, removed from their posts, or they have vanished from public view.
While the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has pursued a nationwide anti-corruption campaign since Xi took office in 2013, the recent disciplinary actions have drawn attention, given that those targeted are not factional rivals of the Chinese leader, but his close lieutenants.
China watchers are now paying close attention to signs regarding the fate of Gen. He Weidong—the regime’s third-most powerful military officer has been missing from public view since mid-March.
As the likelihood of the general’s political downfall rises, his case portends greater turbulence for others in the Xi leadership amid chaotic factional intrigue and deepening crisis for China overall.
Beijing ‘Turns the Knife Inward’
He Weidong, vice-chairman of the CCP’s Central Military Commission, serves alongside fellow Vice-Chairman Gen. Zhang Youxia, while the head of the commission, and hence the PLA, is Xi Jinping himself.
The general was conspicuously absent from a crucial central work conference of the CCP leadership held on April 8 and April 9, and before that, an annual PLA ceremony in Beijing held on April 2.
(L-R) Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission Zhang Youxia and He Weidong attend the fifth plenary session of the National People’s Congress in Beijing, China, on March 12, 2023. China watchers are closely monitoring the fate of He Weidong, the regime’s third-most powerful military official, who has not been seen publicly since mid-March amid reports and rumors of his alleged arrest and investigation by CCP authorities. Lintao Zhang/Getty Images
The earlier cases of officers Li Shangfu and Miao Hua further bode ill for the “disappeared” He Weidong, who assumed the Central Military Commission vice-chairmanship in 2022 at the CCP’s 20th National Congress, which saw Xi take a norm-breaking third term as the head of the Party.
Particularly following the 20th Party Congress, the CCP has promoted such rhetoric as “daring to carry out self-revolution,” “turning the knife inwards,” and “scraping poison from bone” to describe the Xi leadership’s efforts to root out corruption and other internal factors that could lead to the “suicide and self-destruction” of the Communist Party.
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The Chinese military, which has not fought a war since its short-lived invasion of Vietnam in 1979, has long been riddled with embezzlement, bribery, and illicit patronage networks. Starting in 2016, Xi implemented a large-scale restructuring of the PLA, while the anti-corruption campaign took down “big tigers”—parlance for powerful, corrupt officials—in the military, including generals Xu Caihou and Guo Boxiong.
Kung Shan-Son, an expert on Chinese politics with Taiwan’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research, told The Epoch Times at the time of Miao Hua’s investigation that by “beginning to purge those close to him,” Xi is leaning on the anti-corruption campaign “as a tool to tighten his grip” on the PLA.
Asked about He Weidong’s fate at a press briefing on March 27, a spokesman for the Chinese defense ministry said he was “unaware” about any investigation into the Central Military Commission vice-chief, without denying the possibility.
This contrasts with a similar question raised last November in reference to Adm. Dong Jun, who replaced Li Shangfu as defense minister, to which the Chinese defense ministry said that reports of Dong’s investigation were “purely fabricated with malicious intent.”
China’s Defense Minister Dong Jun (C) arrives with his delegation for a meeting with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin during the 21st Shangri-La Dialogue summit at the Shangri-La Hotel in Singapore on May 31, 2024. Dong replaced Li Shangfu, who lost his post in October 2023 and was expelled from the Chinese Communist Party in June. Roslan Rahman/AFP via Getty Images
Has Xi Lost Control?
In addition to the recent purges targeting Xi’s own confidantes and appointees being related to their alleged corrupt activities or other “serious violations,” as the CCP terms it, fierce internecine struggles within the CCP elite may be hamstringing the Chinese leader’s authority, effectively weaponizing the regime apparatus against Xi.
According to commentator Wang Youqun, who holds a doctorate in law at China’s Renmin University and served as a copywriter for a senior CCP Politburo member, the purges of Li Shangfu and Miao Hua—and likely He Weidong—for corruption represent the erosion of Xi’s power over the military.
Notably, the 72-year-old Zhang is one of a handful of active PLA military personnel who are veterans of actual combat, having served in the Sino–Vietnamese War.
Li Shangfu, the former Chinese defense minister, had only served for five months in his post before his disappearance and removal. Similarly, former Foreign Minister Qin Gang was in his role for less than a year, from December 2022 to July 2023.
Qin, who had previously been China’s ambassador in Washington, vanished from public view for weeks before the official announcement that he had been dismissed, amid speculation that he had aroused the ire of CCP authorities for fathering an illegitimate son with a Hong Kong journalist in the United States.
Though Qin was not openly charged with any crime, his removal and transfer to a sinecure position are regarded as a blow to Xi’s prestige, given that he was promoted often and rapidly after Xi came to power.
(Left) China’s Defense Minister Li Shangfu addresses a speech during the Moscow Conference on International Security in Kubinka, Russia, on Aug. 15, 2023. Li was removed from his post in October 2023 after just five months in office and was expelled from the Chinese Communist Party in June. (Right) China’s Foreign Minister Qin Gang attends a press conference during the First Session of the 14th National People’s Congress at the Media Center in Beijing on March 7, 2023. Qin, a former ambassador to the United States, served as foreign minister for less than a year, from December 2022 to July 2023, before disappearing from public view for weeks ahead of his dismissal. Alexander Nemenov/AFP via Getty Images, Lintao Zhang/Getty Images
‘Inevitable Failure’
According to overseas Chinese independent commentator Cao Shenkun and Australia-based Chinese dissident and jurist Yuan Hongbing, the Xi leadership’s relentless pursuit of “self-rectification” has rattled the nerves of many PLA officers, creating an atmosphere of dread among the ranks.
Citing his contacts within the CCP elite, Yuan said that while in custody, PLA Adm. Miao Hua had gone into a frenzy and spent days handwriting a long list of military officers and detailing their alleged offenses.
More than 10 years of nonstop anti-corruption drives, increasingly authoritarian controls over civil society, the intensification of communist ideological indoctrination, the three-year “zero-COVID” lockdowns, and other left-leaning policies under Xi appear to be taking their toll not just on ordinary Chinese but also the CCP officialdom, who see their interests and security threatened.
In early February, an article began circulating on overseas Chinese websites detailing the presence of a “vast technocratic bureaucracy” that has come to oppose and undermine Xi’s leadership.
While offering no criticism of the Communist Party or its ideology, the article, titled “The Inevitable Failure of Xi Jinping,” argues that the regime has come to the brink of collapse owing to Xi’s ruinous economic policies—and can only be rescued through his removal.
According to the article, allegedly written by a functionary in the General Office of the CCP Central Committee, officials in the “technocratic bureaucracy” work at all levels of administration, and were shaped by the CCP’s “reform and opening up” beginning in 1978 that saw China adopt a measure of capitalist market principles.
Miao Hua (center L), China’s director of the political affairs department of the Central Military Commission, is greeted by Kim Su Gil, North Korea’s director of the General Political Bureau of the Korean People’s Army, in Pyongyang on Oct. 14, 2019. Miao was placed under investigation last November. Kim Won Jin/AFP via Getty Images
Disgruntled individuals in this system have been taking action to hamper the implementation of Xi’s governance, in some cases even adopting and twisting his own doctrines to achieve results contrary to the leader’s intentions, “using Xi’s words to oppose Xi,” the article states.
This is a “phenomenon that permeates all spheres of Chinese politics, economics, propaganda, and justice,” the article reads, adding that the “technocrats” are so deeply entrenched that Xi will never be able to purge them thoroughly.
Hence, Xi’s rule is “doomed to inevitable failure.”
Professor Zhang Tianliang, who teaches at Fei Tian Academy of the Arts in upstate New York and hosts a Chinese-language YouTube channel on current affairs, said that the article reflects the existence of “a deep state behind Xi Jinping.”
On his program, Zhang said in early February that while Xi is aware of his position, he does not dare to truly tear down the CCP’s “deep state” lest it result in the downfall of the entire regime.