The corruption within the People’s Liberation Army hasn’t been entirely rooted out, despite Chinese President Xi Jinping’s repeated claims. Though it’s not yet confirmed if corruption was behind Chinese Defence Minister Li Shangfu’s disappearance, the case has once again brought the issue into focus.
China’s military has seen rapid expansion since the reforms initiated by Xi in 2015. However, such an expansion would have followed corrupt activities over military contracts. In the past, access to money was crucial to seek out new contracts.
“Corruption cannot exist within the party, especially in our army. When the army is corrupt, the army will have no fighting capacity,” said an article published by the PLA Daily.
In October 2022, an article published by the PLA Daily claimed that after 10 years of the anti-corruption campaign, the army had “risen from the ashes”.
“As many corrupt elements were punished and a series of policies and systems were introduced, our army has undergone profound changes from top to bottom, from inside to outside,” said the PLA Daily article.
The disappearance – followed by replacement – of three senior Rocket Force military officials has now been linked to corruption.
According to sources who spoke to the South China Morning Post, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), the primary anti-graft body, investigated Commander Li Yuchao and his deputies Zhang Zhenzhong and Liu Guangbin for corruption.
Li Shangfu is also likely being investigated under similar charges. Li’s former position in the PLA’s General Armament Department would have seen him make decisions about acquiring military equipment, which is ridden with corruption.
He was the leading figure behind the acquisition of SU-35 jets and parts from Russia and was sanctioned by the US in 2018 for the deal.
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History of corruption
In July of this year, the General Armament Department asked the public to report irregularities in accounts dating back to October 2017. Li continued to serve as the head of the department until 2022.
The PLA is in-charge of a large military-industrial complex linked to state-owned enterprises (SOEs) that manufacture weapons. But this concentration of power has raised concerns within the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) about control over the PLA – an issue we see being repeated.
In 2021, the head of NORINCO (China North Industries Group Corp) Yin Jiashu, one of the biggest weapons manufacturers, was investigated on graft charges. At the time, the CCDI had said on its website that Yin was investigated for the ‘serious violation’ of laws and regulations.
Historically, access to money was one of the ways in which corruption thrived in China.
Today, the troubles in the Chinese real estate market stem from the consolidation of power in the hands of the local government to acquire land, sometimes through coercive tactics. As the Chinese state took control of land rights across the country, the CCP cadre suddenly had enormous power to transfer land for state activities.
The PLA was once involved in running hotels and had control over large swathes of land for various government activities. In the 1990s, corruption within the PLA was rampant, and a campaign was initiated to root out its source, which included taking away the PLA’s business operations.
Xi’s logic behind launching an anti-corruption campaign at the beginning of his term was part of a broader attempt to consolidate the CCP’s role in Chinese society, which he thought had weakened during the two decades of rapid economic growth.
The biggest form of corruption, described as insider trading, was the transfer of SOEs to private entities controlled by the CCP elite.
“Some SOEs were changed into joint ventures and transferred to private companies owned by political connections, friends or family at substantial discounts,” wrote Jasmine Wang and Børge Bakken in their article titled ‘The changing forms of corruption in China’.
In the recent actions against private enterprises, the government took about 1 per cent stakes in Alibaba, Tencent and other tech companies. The arrangement may sound innocuous, but the government regained control over these high-profitable companies, which had increasingly appeared to be out of the CCP’s control.
Another approach has been used to transfer SOEs to private ownership, called restructuring, or gaizhi (改 制). It allowed full transfer of companies to the CCP chiefs or government officials under “mixed ownership” deals.
Also read: Xi purging military brass has a message—It’s CCP that calls shots in China, not PLA
A political tactic
Yet another form of corruption has continued, or expanded under Xi—the ‘buying and selling of office’ maiguan maiguan (买官卖官). With the concentration of power at the top, some officials on the bottom rung have sensed an opportunity to exploit their access to Xi in return for money and rewards.
An interesting feature of Xi’s anti-corruption campaign has been targeting military officials and financial executives, which may not have been easy in the past.
In China’s Gilded Age, Yuen Yuen Ang identifies four forms of corrupt activities: petty theft, grand theft, speed money, and access money. Yuen describes Xi’s anti-corruption campaign as a ‘paradoxical policy tool’, which has turned into a ‘sustained campaign’ with no end date.
We can’t deny that Xi’s campaign has a political flavour as he has used it to bring down potential rivals such as former Minister of Justice Fu Zhenghua.
Yuen concludes that despite having developed an effective tool to uproot corruption and target employees, such criminal offenses continue to evolve in China.
Xi’s actions against corruption in the PLA’s upper echelon shows his decisiveness to remove individuals even after promoting them. But the move also indicates that he will have difficulty finding reliable military officials who can deliver on the modernisation efforts outlined by him.
China’s regional ambitions – backed by its military power – will take a setback as Xi tries to sort out the mess and find reliable military officials to fulfil his vision.
The author is a columnist and a freelance journalist. He was previously a China media journalist at the BBC World Service. He tweets @aadilbrar. Views are personal.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)