Corruption may have disrupted Chinese military officers' progress

19/12/2024 6:03

Corruption in China's

military may have disrupted its progress towards its 2027

military modernization goals, the Pentagon said in its annual

report on Beijing's military that was released on Wednesday.



Since last year, China's military has undergone a sweeping

anti-corruption purge and last month the defense ministry said a

top-ranking military official had been suspended and was under

investigation for "serious violations of discipline."



The wide-ranging Pentagon report said that between July and

December 2023, at least 15 high-ranking Chinese military

officers and defense industry executives were removed from their

posts.



"In 2023, the PLA experienced a new wave of

corruption-related investigations and removals of senior leaders

which may have disrupted its progress toward stated 2027

modernization goals," the report said, using an acronym for the

People's Liberation Army (PLA).



U.S. officials, including the head of the Central

Intelligence Agency, have said that Chinese President Xi Jinping

had ordered his military to be ready to conduct an invasion of

Taiwan by 2027.



China's official 2027 modernization goals include

accelerating the integration of intelligence, mechanization and

other tools while boosting the speed of modernization in

military theories, personnel, weapons and equipment, the

Pentagon said.



The removal of the 15 senior officials was likely the "tip

of the iceberg," Ely Ratner, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense

for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs, told a Washington think tank

after the report's release. China's leadership would not be

taking such extreme anticorruption measures unless they felt the

PLA's operational effectiveness was being impacted, he said.



"I don't think this is just ... some guys are taking some

money and putting it in their pocket, or maybe their banquets,

they're buying too expensive whiskey," Ratner said at the Center

for Strategic and International Studies.



The crackdown would likely create a period of risk aversion

and "paralysis" through lower ranks, he added.



A senior U.S. defense official told reporters that the

anti-corruption hunt also can slow down military projects,

including in China's defense industry.



"Once they uncover corruption in one place or involving one

senior official, there's sort of a bit of a spiraling effect

(which) inevitably seems to draw in additional officials," the

official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said.



The report pointed to several removals from China's military

rocket force, known as the People's Liberation Army Rocket Force

(PLARF), an elite arm of the PLA that oversees its most advanced

conventional and nuclear missiles.



"The impact on PRC (People's Republic of China) leaders'

confidence in the PLA after discovering corruption on this scale

is probably elevated by the PLARF's uniquely important nuclear

mission," it added.



In November, China said Admiral Miao Hua, who served on the

Central Military Commission, the country's highest-level

military command body, was under investigation for "serious

violations of discipline." Miao had been the military's leading

political officer on the six-person commission, which is headed

by Xi.



Beijing has said media reports that Defense Minister Dong

Jun, who ranks below Miao, had been sidelined by an

investigation were "sheer fabrication."



"The PLA made uneven progress toward its 2027 capability

milestone for modernization, which, if realized, could make the

PLA a more credible military tool for the CCP's Taiwan

unification efforts," a document accompanying the Pentagon

report said, using an acronym for the Chinese Communist Party.



A poll by Taiwan's top military think tank published in

October said that most Taiwanese believe China is unlikely to

invade in the coming five years but do see Beijing as a serious

threat to the democratic island.



Over the past five years or so, China's military has

significantly ramped up its activities around Taiwan, which

Beijing views as its own territory, over the strong objections

of the government in Taipei, and has never renounced the use of

force to bring the island under its control.



Ratner said despite efforts to modernize, it was not clear

the PLA was getting closer to its Taiwan-related goals given

U.S. moves to keep pace and build deterrence in the

Indo-Pacific.



"They may be racing forward with military modernization, but

finding themselves just as distant, if not more distant, from

solving some of the operational problems they're trying to

solve," he said.