The Chinese Ministry of Defense announced on Friday that it had banished nine senior member of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) officers, including a former Politburo member, from the Communist Party for alleged corruption.
The latest purge at the top implicated General He Weidong (pictured), the vice chairman of the Central Military Commission – the second most powerful general in China. He disappeared in March without explanation after rising rapidly to the highest echelons in power in the country, repeating a pattern of several high-ranking Communist Party officials plucked from obscurity by genocidal dictator Xi Jinping himself, only to be unceremoniously stripped of their titles and disappeared from public life.
Xi seized power in China as “president” in 2013 and rapidly moved to build a massive bureaucratic apparatus to regularly eliminate senior Communist Party members, accused of “corruption” and other vague charges. Xi announced a “Mass Line” campaign to eradicate allegedly deviant communists, using a Maoist term associated with purges, and dramatically increased the power of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), the Party office in charge of prosecuting and removing powerful communists accused of “corruption.”
He’s disappearance is of particular note as he had risen to join the 24-member Politburo, Xi Jinping’s elite team that actually governs China. Others on the list of those identified as purged was another missing member of the Central Military Commission, Admiral Miao Hua, who disappeared shortly before He and has been identified as an ally of He’s.
The Ministry of Defense identified the other victims of the purge as:
the department’s former deputy head He Hongjun; Wang Xiubin, former deputy chief of the CMC joint operations command center; Lin Xiangyang, former commander of the PLA Eastern Theater Command; Qin Shutong, former political commissar of the PLA Ground Force; Yuan Huazhi, former political commissar of PLA Navy; Wang Houbin, former commander of PLA Rocket Force; and Wang Chunning, former commander of the People’s Armed Police Force.
These individuals stand accused of “disciplinary violations and alleged serious duty-related crimes,” the Ministry claimed, failing to identify any specific crimes or elaborate on what “violations” are in question. The ministry nonetheless emphasized that these vague crimes were “extremely serious” and “egregious.”
The Ministry of Defense proclaimed that the regime maintained a “firm resolve to carry the anti-corruption campaign through to the end.”
Gen. He Weidong stopped appearing in public after March 11, failing to attend to several important official affairs without explanation. In the past – such as in the case of vanished Foreign Minister Qin Gang – the Communist Party has attempted to excuse bizarre absences, claiming that the purged are suffering from illness, but no such attempt occurred in this case. His last appearance occurred at the National People’s Congress (NPC), Xi’s rubber-stamp legislative body, which traditionally meets in full once a year. At the time of his disappearance, only Central Military Commission Vice Chairman Zhang Youxia and Chairman Xi Jinping – one of Xi’s many titles – outranked him in the military leadership of China.
The Organisation for Research in China and Asia, an Indian research firm, noted in April, following He’s disappearance, that the disappearance of a Politburo member is a massive power play on Xi’s behalf.
FILE/He Weidong (L), second-ranked vice chairman of China’s Central Military Commission (CMC), and Zhang Youxia (R) first-ranked vice chairman of the CMC leave the Great Hall of the People after the closing ceremony of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference in Beijing on March 10, 2025. (GREG BAKER/AFP via Getty Images)
“Gen. He is not only a senior military leader but also a Politburo member – one of the 24 members that effectively rule China,” the institute observed in an analysis at the time. “His sudden disappearance, occurring in close succession to Admiral Miao’s removal, raise significant questions regarding elite political stability, internal purges, and the mechanisms of control within the upper echelons of the Chinese military establishment.”
Xi has purged tens of thousands of Communist Party members during his time at the helm of the country, but turbulence has become increasingly common at the top of the leadership since 2023. In addition to the disappearance and later purge of former Foreign Minister Qin Gang, China lost two defense ministers in succession, Wei Fenghe and Li Shangfu, to “discipline” purges. Wei initially resigned, presumably due to advanced age, as defense minister in early 2023. Li disappeared in August 2023, while Wei vanished from the public eye after his retirement.
In June 2024 – almost a year later – the Communist Party confirmed that both were under criminal investigation “following clues uncovered during cases handled by the Discipline Inspection Commission of the Central Military Commission.”
“Both Li and Wei seriously violated political and organizational discipline, and resisted organizational scrutiny,” the state propaganda newspaper China Daily reported. The newspaper went on to claim that the leaders had “lost faith and loyalty” in communism, leading to some suspicious that ideological dissidents could have played a role in their demise, not just alleged bribery.
Wei lost his role after ascending to the defense minister position from one of the most trusted offices in the Chinese military, leading the Second Artillery Corps, now known as the Rocket Force. The Rocket Force controls China’s nuclear arsenal.
In 2023, the CCDI announced that it had purged nearly 500,000 people in the first nine months of just that year alone.
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