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China has sacked nine senior military officers, including an army commander in a critical position for a potential attack on Taiwan, in a further sign of leader Xi Jinping’s deepening purge of the People’s Liberation Army.
The Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress had stripped the officers of their position as delegates, alongside 10 other NPC members, it said in a statement late on Thursday ahead of the rubber-stamp legislature’s annual plenary session next week.
The move cut the size of the PLA delegation to the body to 243 members, down from 281 appointed at the start of the current NPC term in 2023. NPC delegates usually have their qualifications cancelled only when they are under investigation.
It also came just a month after the shock purge of Zhang Youxia, China’s most senior general, whom the Communist party has accused of undermining Xi’s authority.
The announcement that Zhang is under investigation has left the Central Military Commission, the PLA’s top leadership body, with only one member other than the chair, Xi himself.
It was also widely seen as evidence that Xi’s multiyear military cleansing campaign had moved far beyond a crackdown on corruption and could affect the force’s combat capabilities and political orientation.
While the officers removed from the NPC this week are not as senior as Zhang, the latest purges confirmed the broadening of Xi’s crackdown.
Among those removed was Ding Laifu, commander of the PLA Ground Force’s 73rd Army, which military experts believe would be one of the most important units if Beijing attempts to invade Taiwan.
The 73rd Army belongs to the PLA’s Eastern Theatre Command, which is in charge of leading a potential Taiwan operation. Several amphibious forces units under the 73rd Army have significantly stepped up training in recent years as part of what Taipei describes as the PLA’s increased ability to mount an assault on short notice.
Another operational-level officer among the sacked NPC delegates was Yang Guang, commander of the PLA Rocket Force’s Base 64, a key unit operating intercontinental ballistic missiles, including nuclear-capable ones. The base has almost doubled in size since 2017, according to a report by the China Aerospace Studies Institute, a research centre of the US Air Force’s Air University.
The base commanded seven brigades, including at least four road-mobile nuclear ICBM brigades and one dual nuclear-conventional intermediate-range ballistic missile brigade, the report said.
PLA Ground Force commander Li Qiaoming was also dismissed from the NPC, confirming his purge after a long absence from public view.
Bian Ruifeng and Wang Donghai, political commissars at the CMC’s political work department and its national defence mobilisation department, were also among those purged, as was Li Wei, political commissar of the Information Support Force, a unit created just two years ago to support the PLA with intelligence and communications.
The PLA’s political work system and its political commissars are in charge of personnel and ideology and are intended to ensure the force’s absolute loyalty to the party. The PLA is a party army rather than a national military.
Two former political commissars from the navy and the air force, as well as a former navy commander, also lost their positions as NPC delegates.