Arthur Ding, K. Tristan Tang
On June 28, Huang Qiang (黄强) was appointed as the party secretary of Jilin Province. Formerly secretary-general of the National Defense Science and Technology Commission (国防科工委) and deputy director general of the National Defense Science and Technology Bureau (国防科工局), Huang’s promotion marks a further development for the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) group of military-industrial leaders (Xinhua, June 28). Alongside Hao Peng (郝鹏) in Liaoning and Xu Qin (许勤) in Heilongjiang, all three provincial Party secretaries for the major industrial bases in Northeast China now have backgrounds in the defense industry.
Supreme leader Xi Jinping has provided consistent support to the defense industry in recent years, and has increased his reliance on officials from defense industry backgrounds—as seen in the curricula vitae of Central Committee members unveiled at the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) 20th Party Congress in October 2022 (The Diplomat, September 12). These developments represented a culmination of personnel decisions that date back to at least the 19th Party Congress in 2017, when Xi’s emphasis on the importance of military-industrial officials began to become observable. Research to date has tended to analyze this rising group of military-industrial personnel from a technocratic perspective (see China Leadership Monitor, December 1, 2022; February 29). Owing to the significant differences between military-industrial officials and technocrats in general, however, the PRC’s military-industrial group merits attention as a growing force within both the defense industry and the CCP Central Committee, and has the potential to one day emerge as a key faction within the PRC’s political system.
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