Victoria Herczegh
It’s early days in the Year of the Dragon, but Beijing’s purge of the People’s Liberation Army shows no signs of stopping. The latest known victim is Wang Xiaojun, one of China’s foremost rocket scientists, who had been working closely with the PLA Rocket Force and Chinese defense companies. Wang was reportedly expelled from the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the country’s top advisory body, in late January. As with other recent sackings of Rocket Force officials, no reason was given for Wang’s dismissal.
Officially, the Chinese Communist Party is in the midst of a crackdown on corruption. In 2023, 45 senior officials were put under investigation, which Chinese media say is a record. But that is not the full story. Instead, misappropriated funds and a resultant drop in troop morale are fueling worries in the government about unrest within the PLA. Additionally, the Rocket Force officials who were expelled late last year reportedly made weapons acquisitions without the central government’s knowledge, raising questions about President Xi Jinping’s authority among the PLA’s top officials.
Aside from the high-level purges, in January the Communist Party secretaries of three Chinese provinces (Anhui, Fujian and Jiangxi) conducted separate tours of the PLA’s Eastern Theater Command, which oversees Taiwan. All three secretaries met with the theater commander, delivered rousing speeches before the troops, pledged benefits for veterans and soldiers’ families, and promised to contribute to the unification of Taiwan with mainland China. Provincial chiefs rarely do in-person inspections of military commands, so three in one month is highly unusual.
These are unusual times in the PLA. Xi’s government is committed to the force’s rapid modernization, to transform it into a “world-class” military by 2049. Its plans include the expansion and diversification of China’s nuclear capabilities. However, several recent reports have cast doubt on the PLA’s modernization drive. According to former officers, some military departments can hardly afford supplies or new equipment because of rampant corruption and poor budget management. Other reports cite the lack of cross-training among the five services and a critical shortage of professionally trained noncommissioned officers, who ensure that officers’ decisions are communicated to the troops and properly executed.
At stake is not only the PLA’s distant future but also its present, because these problems are damaging to troop morale and military recruitment. About 35 percent of China’s 2 million military personnel are conscripts, 80 percent of whom say they will return to civilian life when their two-year service is completed. Ads on social media target young and middle-aged recruits for active-duty officer and administrative roles in the PLA, promising better benefits than those enjoyed by civil servants. But even salary hikes and a recent revision of the conscription requirements have not helped the PLA recruit and retain technically skilled personnel.
The government’s latest method of addressing problems in the PLA is “military-civil fusion,” which Beijing has sold as a way to boost war readiness. It set up so-called military-civil fusion offices in several provinces and tasked them with involving the private sector in the military buildup, allocating funds and technologies to support the PLA’s modernization, and making recruitment more efficient. The government is especially interested in exploiting dual-use technologies such as quantum computing, big data, semiconductors, 5G, advanced nuclear technology, aerospace and artificial intelligence. It is developing or acquiring key technologies through investment in private industries, talent recruitment programs, academic research benefitting the military, intelligence gathering and outright theft. Crucially, the fusion approach enables more civilian entities to undertake classified military research and development as well as weapons production.
To support military mobilization, new local mobilization offices have been organizing large events targeted mainly at the 16-24 age group. At these events, which have been extended to most major cities, young people can participate in simulated military drills and learn how the PLA uses science, technology and engineering skills. Beijing hopes to kill two birds with one stone: filling the PLA’s ranks while providing more employment opportunities for the more than 10 million college graduates expected to swell the job market this year. A large share of these graduates will be seeking jobs in science or tech – precisely the fields that have suffered most directly from Xi’s tech crackdown, causing firms to hesitate when it comes to large-scale hiring, particularly of young people with no work experience. Attracting more science, tech and engineering talent to the PLA would not only help it achieve its modernization goals but also alleviate the burden of youth unemployment.
Institutional reform is never easy, and the combination of a crackdown on high-level military corruption, low troop morale and mounting economic problems makes China’s current effort especially volatile. The only thing more frightening to the regime than protests in the streets would be a revolt within the military. What’s more, technology theft and the military modernization drive are worrying Beijing’s rivals, encouraging them to do more to decouple from China. But for now, China is mostly looking inward. Until it is satisfied that the PLA is fully under political control, starting a military conflict will not be on Xi’s short-term agenda.
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