China probes top officer discipline ‘violations’

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Chinese leader Xi Jinping has taken his purge of the People’s Liberation Army to its highest echelons as Beijing announced a probe into one of the five officers who hold top command over the country’s armed forces.

Miao Hua, a member of the Central Military Commission and head of its Political Work Department, was suspended from his duties amid an investigation for “serious violations of discipline”, defence ministry spokesperson Wu Qian said on Thursday.

“Serious violations of discipline” usually refers to corruption and Miao is the most senior military officer to be ensnared in the latest round of Xi’s crackdown on the armed forces, which began last year.

The campaign started with a focus on corruption in the PLA department for arms development and procurement. It then targeted current and former leaders of the Rocket Force — the arm in charge of conventional and nuclear missile forces — as well as then-defence minister Li Shangfu and his predecessor Wei Fenghe, who both also had previously served in the Rocket Force and in procurement and development.

But Miao has worked as a political commissar for most of his career and is a Navy admiral, showing that Xi’s latest campaign has broadened.

The head of the PLA’s Political Work Department is more senior than the defence minister, who in the Chinese system does not wield real power over the armed forces. Political commissars are in charge of ensuring the Communist party’s control over the PLA.

Ensuring the armed forces’ absolute loyalty to the party and tightening his personal grip over them has been at the core of Xi’s decade-long effort to reform and restructure the military.

Miao worked alongside Xi for many years when Xi was deputy provincial party secretary in Fujian. He was then promoted quickly after Xi became the party’s top leader in 2012. During Xi’s first big crackdown on corruption in the military, which led to the fall of a CMC then-vice chair and his predecessor, Miao was transferred from the Army to become the Navy’s political commissar, an unusual move in the PLA.

Beijing’s announcement of the investigation against Miao comes after the Financial Times reported that defence minister Dong Jun was under investigation for corruption.

At the defence ministry’s monthly press conference on Thursday, Wu called such reports “pure fabrication” and said China was “strongly dissatisfied with such slanderous behaviour”, according to news agency reports. Wu’s comments on the FT report were not included in a transcript of the press conference on the defence ministry website on Thursday evening.

Wu also lashed out against the US, accusing Washington of making “groundless accusations” against China over Beijing’s actions in the South China Sea and its assistance to Russia in the Ukraine war, and for violating China’s “core interests”. Wu suggested these were the reasons why Dong refused to meet US defence secretary Lloyd Austin at a regional forum in Laos last week.

On Wednesday, Chinese state media cited Wu as naming US arms sales to Taiwan and its military co-operation with the Philippines as reasons for the snub.

The PLA’s Southern Theatre Command, which is in charge of the South China Sea, on Thursday afternoon said it had started “combat readiness patrols” around Scarborough Shoal, a reef inside the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone.