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China has purged the number two general in the People’s Liberation Army and eight other senior commanders, in a big shake-up by President Xi Jinping as he intensifies his anti-corruption drive within the military.
Xi formally fired General He Weidong, the junior of two vice-chairs of the six-member Central Military Commission. The removal was the first time in six decades that such a high-ranking general has been purged while in office.
He Weidong was third in command of the PLA, which is led by Xi in his capacity as chair of the CMC. He was also a member of the Communist party’s politburo. The FT reported in April that he had been fired.
“The removal of He Weidong is one of the biggest shake-ups within the PLA in decades,” said Lyle Morris, an expert on the Chinese military at the Asia Society Policy Institute. “He was on a fast track to become the next senior vice-chair of the CMC, possibly replacing Zhang Youxia, and skipped a grade when he was elevated to the CMC during the 20th Party Congress.”
Xi’s latest purge removes some of China’s most senior military officers, and includes leaders in the army, navy, rocket force and armed police. The defence ministry said the nine officers “were suspected of major job-related crimes involving especially large sums of money”.
Xi also purged Miao Hua, another member of the CMC who had been suspended from the body in November 2024.
The defence ministry said the officers had also been expelled from the Communist party and that their suspected criminal cases had been transferred to military prosecutors.
Xi’s aggressive campaign to root out corruption in the PLA accelerated in 2023 with probes into officers overseeing military procurement. It has since widened to include commanders across all branches of the armed forces. Some experts have also suggested that the extent of the purges may mean that Xi has other concerns about the military, beyond problems with graft.
His anti-corruption drive became even more aggressive following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, where pervasive graft within the Russian military contributed to a string of costly and humiliating battlefield failures.
The nine purged officers included He Hongjun, former deputy head of the CMC Political Work Department.
The defence ministry said the stern handling of the top three fired officers “underscored the clear stance that there is absolutely no place for corrupt elements within the armed forces”.
“It represents a major achievement in the party’s and military’s anti-corruption efforts, making the people’s armed forces purer, more unified, and more capable of combat.”
Eight of the nine leaders were members of the party’s Central Committee, the roughly 200-member body that ranks just below the Politburo and serves as the Communist party’s top decision-making authority.
Their formal removals come ahead of a major meeting of the central committee next week, when the upper echelons of the party will discuss the country’s next five-year development plan.
Wang Houbin, who was head of the PLA Rocket Force, which is partly responsible for overseeing China’s nuclear arsenal was also among the removed officers. He had been promoted to lead the force in 2023 after his predecessor and his deputy were themselves purged in an earlier phase of the anti-corruption campaign.
