With Washington particularly unprepared in the transition of power, China’s ideal leader, Xi Jinping (習近平), is stepping up his anti-corruption crusade in the face of the military’s most sensible officers.
At first glance, the move appears to be consistent with the emphasis on wanting to improve the military’s preparedness for a possible full military invasion of Taiwan, as the military will need to be well-disciplined and free of corruption.
Upon closer inspection, however, a series of purges of several of the army’s most sensible officers since last year raises the question of what dynamics this anomaly played.
More specifically, general Wei Fenghe (魏鳳和) and his immediate successor, Li Shangfu (李尚福), were removed as People’s Republic China (PRC) Defense Minister and other related top party-military positions and then stripped of Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) membership for corruption and disciplinary infraction. Most recently, Li’s immediate successor, Admiral Dong Jun (董軍), again has reportedly been put on suspension of work and is under investigation for disciplinary infractions.
Furthermore, Admiral Miao Hua (苗華), who is one of the seven members of the CCP Central Military Commission, suffered a real fate.
It is well known that the communist regime suffers from deep-seated structural corruption motivated by clientelism, reinforced by the Confucian culture in which the richest member of the circle of relatives is obliged to take care of all his extended relatives materially. It is difficult to locate anyone who is not corrupt among the regime’s leaders, as evidenced by the case of former Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶), who has long been the “cleanest” leader. as demonstrated by the so-called Chinese president, the so-called Panama Papers.
It is not surprising that the anti-corruption crusade is popular given the population’s growing resentment against corrupt leaders. This is partly because, in the midst of a deepening depression, Xi has followed the political line of “common prosperity” while combining his crusade with a redistribution from the rich to the poor. In reality, until Xi’s private dictatorial force was consolidated, the crusade basically targeted his main political rivals and key figures in his factions, which constitutes his arbitrary tool of force. struggle.
However, those army leaders are neither Xi’s rivals nor key figures in his faction. The leaders are Xi’s protégés, hand-picked. This strongly suggests that either admiral acted in accordance with the interests of the army. Most tellingly, they have nevertheless become prime targets of Xi’s purges.
It is well known that Xi has under pressure the central importance of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) in the event of an all-out war in Taiwan, with a sustained precedent in budget allocation. Given Xi’s corporate control over the Army Central Commission and the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, joint military-army rivalry over budget allocation can hardly contribute to the purges.
The most likely explanation is that the admirals oppose an all-out war against Taiwan in which the PLAN would suffer a general defeat at the hands of the American and Japanese navies, resulting in heavy losses, as simulated in several war exercises held during Giant Western and Japanese reflex teams.
In fact, the US naval forces have the world’s most complex weaponry and the richest combat experience, while the Japanese naval forces have complex weapons and very complicated training with the US forces. On the other hand, the PLAN forces, like the Air Force, have had no real fighting experience since their creation, despite their quantitative superiority, at least for a short, limited war directed at the Taiwan theater of operations. .
The PLA has one de facto defeat experience in the war against Vietnam in 1979.
This is probably why Xi has carried out sequential purges to discipline the military’s unwillingness and veiled sabotage to a Taiwan war. The necessity of discipline has rapidly grown, since time is running out for Xi to achieve “Chinese dream of great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” especially through the unification of Taiwan. With the recent gigantic asset bubble burst and deteriorating demographic onus, the Chinese economy has already peaked. This could necessitate Xi to wage a war while the country still has temporary quantitative superiority in military hardware supported by the extant overproduction capacity and other necessary economic power.
With this in mind, it is mandatory to perceive the importance of the recent unprecedented maritime activities from December 9 to 11, with approximately 60 giant PLAN surface combatants and around 30 primary Chinese coast guard vessels deployed in the East and West Seas. Southern China. and the western Pacific in general. The move amounts to a repeated naval blockade against Taiwan, unlike several large-scale live-fire joint naval and air exercises conducted by the PLA over the past two years.
Given its pacifist constitutional constraints, Japan’s military action against a blockade of Taiwan is highly unlikely, because it is not an unprovoked armed attack against Japan. Japan can only exercise the limited right of collective self-defense with the US in the Taiwan theater if the country faces “situations posing threats to the survival.” Without Japan’s rear-area and logistical support, the US might be unwilling to make an armed intervention.
The above maritime activities might be a well-calibrated move by the PLAN in which the PLA’s reluctance against Xi’s adventurism has surfaced.
Analyzing the secret strife between Xi and the military is inherently intellectual guess work, since it largely remains in a “black box.” Yet, the risks of Xi’s adventurism are real, so Washington, Tokyo and Taipei had better prepare for the worst now rather than later.
Masahiro Matsumura is Professor of International Politics and National Security at St Andrew’s University School of Law in Osaka, Japan, and a Taiwan Fellow at the Taiwan Center for Security Studies in Taipei.