Anushka Saxena
On November 28, 2024, Colonel Wu Qian, Director of the Information Bureau of and spokesperson for China’s Ministry of National Defense (MoND) announced that Miao Hua, a member of the Central Military Commission (CMC) and Director of the Political Work Department with the rank of General, is suspected of serious disciplinary violations. He further added at the widely covered press conference that the decision to suspend Miao Hua for investigation followed intense deliberation by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC).
Miao’s suspension comes at the heels of a report by the American media platform Financial Times (dated November 27) that Chinese Defence Minister Dong Jun too, may have been placed under investigation for corruption, which seemed a bit too quick to have been true given that just on November 20 and 21, Dong was in Vientiane, Lao PDR, to attend the 11th ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting-Plus. Normally, in the Chinese system, public presence or absence is a marker for whether an official is still in the safety net or not, vis-à-vis corruption, disloyalty, or other grave violations of part discipline. One would remember that in the cases of former Foreign Minister Qin Gang and former Defence Minister Li Shangfu, their respective public absences before the stories of their official dismissal broke out, were 1 and 2 months. For now, suspicions regarding the investigation against Dong have been quashed by Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning in one of her regular press conferences (either November 27 or 28; the question regarding the same has been removed from the press releases), where she reportedly said that FT was “grasping winds and shadows” (“捕风捉影”).
But it is clear that a greater game is afoot, one where there is a clear internal strife within the CMC, and where Miao and Dong’s corruption-related investigations may be interlinked. This is not just a crisis in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) – it is the entire Chinese security apparatus house that is on fire.
No comments:
Post a Comment