Try as he might, it is clear that Xi Jinping cannot rid his military of the insidious corruption that defines its workings much more than the count of warships and nuclear warheads ever can.
Another spate of Chinese military corruption cases serves as a reminder that a decades-long practice and culture of corruption continues to flourish within and among the ranks and relationships of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
Recent headlines of two more Chinese generals who are being investigated by Chinese Communist Party disciplinary authorities only repeat reports regularly found over the years in Chinese media about malfeasance in the military. Promotions come with a price tag. Even basic enlistment requires bribes, sources report. Luxury properties both in China as well as internationally are owned by the relatives of the highest-ranking PLA officers. Procurement – always risky but fertile ground for illicit dealing – is said to be rife with backhanders, inflated contract bidding, and other forms of bribery. Property scandals proliferate, as well. There are even reports of rigged admissions to PLA training schools, and the tests they proctor.
In the latest case, the disgraced officials are National People’s Congress Standing Committee members Lieutenant General You Haitao and Vice Admiral Li Pengcheng. They have been removed from China’s top legislative body, which foretells future action against them if found necessary.
You Haitao was the deputy commander of the PLA’s Southern Theater Command. As such, You had major responsibilities for a range of military operations for not only the provinces of southern and southwestern Mainland China, but also for the South Sea Fleet, Hong Kong, and Macao. This put You into a position of authority over three of the most politically as well as militarily sensitive regions in today’s China: the islands in the South China Sea, which are in perpetual dispute between China and several of its neighbors; Hong Kong, fresh off its struggles to ward off Beijing’s control; and the China-Myanmar border areas, unstable and volatile due to the ongoing insurgency in Myanmar.
A report from the U.S. Army’s Foreign Military Studies Office suggested that these multiple and simultaneous challenges have the Southern Theater Command “stretched to its operational limits.”
You held talks internationally, as well. In November 2019, he met with then-Chief of the Army Staff of Pakistan Qamar Javed Bajwa at Pakistan’s military headquarters in Rawalpindi, to discuss “matters of mutual interest.” That the now-disgraced lieutenant general would meet with Pakistan’s army chief, arguably a position more powerful than that of Pakistan’s prime minister, is an illustration of the power and influence which You had, all with the blessing of Xi Jinping.
The other PLA officer to fall in the latest anti-corruption round-up was Li Pengcheng, the PLA Navy’s South Sea Fleet commander (in other words, the navy head for the Southern Theater Command). The vice admiral was in the public eye as recently as the opening ceremony of the Exercise Maritime Cooperation with Singapore’s Navy, held this past September at China’s Ma Xie Naval Base in Zhanjiang, Guangdong Province. Li co-officiated the ceremony with his counterpart, Rear Admiral Kwan Hon Chuong.
Li, sources report, is a native of Harbin, the capital of Heilongjiang Province in China’s far northeast. He is said to have advanced rapidly in the PLAN. He is associated with China’s strategic and modernization naval developments.
The Chinese public eagerly follows cases such as these. And they know that what becomes public knowledge is probably just the tip of the iceberg. Ordinary Chinese citizens do not accept the depth of corruption with which the Chinese military is riddled, but they are at a loss to remedy it. Xi allows the issue to be exposed at regular intervals in official Chinese media, suggesting some level of transparency. At the same time, however, the systemic nature of the culture of patronage within the PLA is so difficult to eradicate that it calls into question the legitimacy of both the CCP and the government.
The People’s Liberation Army is central to the origin story of the People’s Republic of China. The PRC was brought into existence not by any regular political process, but at the conclusion of a long, protracted military struggle with the ruling Kuomintang, led by General Chiang Kai-shek. As such, many in China wish to revere the PLA; it gives them something in which to believe, even over and above the Communist Party itself. But stories of riches going to the (mostly male) highest level officers and their families erode confidence in both the CCP and the PLA.
Over the years, the steady drip of carefully curated news about China’s purge of corrupt military leaders has helped Xi domestically, Promises made, promises kept, some feel. At least, they say, it can be said that Xi is confronting the problem, exposing the worst of it, and serving up consequences for those who have betrayed the trust of the party and the people.
But military corruption in China is a decades-old scourge – one about which a PLA general, the son of a former president of China, spoke bluntly in late 2011 and early 2012, according to multiple sources.
At the time, General Liu Yuan, Liu Shaoqi’s son, was “the most powerful official of the PLA’s General Logistics Department.” According to notes taken during a speech to about 600 of his officers, Liu told the assembled audience, “No country can defeat China… Only our own corruption can destroy us and cause our armed forces to be defeated without fighting.”
Efforts to counter corruption in the PLA have a long history as well. In the late 1980s and well into the 1990s, the foreign expatriate and diplomatic communities railed against the deep ties that the Chinese military held with Chinese business. Some of the business relationships involved hearkened back to the 1920s. Then, in 1998, the Chinese government issued a directive requiring the PLA to divest from business enterprises and to surrender what was not divested by the end of the year. The decision was made on high, among the leading party and military leaders in the country.
More than a quarter of a century later, it seems that the 1998 directive did little more than to rearrange the processes by which those in power can personally benefit from their positions. Relationships have not so much been surrendered as reorganized. A new paradigm is at work in Xi’s China, but the mechanism by which military leaders can profit is supported by a culture that is hard to opt out of. It is simply hard – if not impossible – to receive promotions and advance to a position of power in the PLA without paying the necessary bribes. And once you’ve paid into the system, the temptation to profit from it becomes all the greater.
One footnote to this story is important to highlight. Western democracies and other allies should not underestimate China’s military capabilities simply because the PLA is tainted. There is much that is touched by corruption of one sort or another in China, and that has not stopped the country from becoming one of the top economic players in the world.