Chinese Communist Party official Chen Weijun, executive vice chairman of the “Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR),” on Sunday became the latest Chinese official in the homeland of the oppressed Uyghur Muslims to be purged on corruption charges.
Chen was placed under “disciplinary review and supervisory investigation” for “serious violations of discipline and law” by the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) on Sunday. The CCDI is China’s highest-level anti-corruption agency, and its targets are generally accused of “serious violations of discipline and law.”
In October, a city-level Communist Party chief named Liu Chen was investigated for “serious violations of discipline and law.”
According to Chinese state media, the Politburo held a meeting on Friday to review an extensive report on corruption across China, especially in peripheral and rural areas like the XUAR, or occupied East Turkistan.
As it has been doing nonstop for years, the Politburo congratulated itself for making great strides against corruption but fretted there was even more corruption that should be “taken very seriously and addressed.”
The Friday meeting concluded with a Politburo resolution to “eradicate the soil for corruption, and create a clean and upright political environment.”
Corruption crusades in China tend to be political purges, in which officials who have fallen out of favor or displeased the Communist Party hierarchy in some manner suddenly find themselves investigated on vague and euphemistic charges, often leading to prison time. The most unfortunate losers of Chinese Communist Party power struggles simply disappear without explanation.
Dictator Xi Jinping is believed to be currently embroiled in a power struggle with elements of the Chinese military, resulting in a vast purge of generals and top military officials – especially in the Rocket Force, the prestigious branch of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) that manages its nuclear weapons.
Some observers believe China’s leadership is haunted by the fall of the Soviet Union, which they see as having begun when the Communist Party of Russia lost control of its military. Xi and other top Chinese Communist leaders are therefore paranoid about losing control over the PLA, and reassure themselves by cleaning out ambitious military leaders with anti-corruption purges from time to time.
Others wonder if the scope and viciousness of Xi’s current military purge means the maximum leader is having trouble bringing the PLA fully under his control, or senses so much dissension in the ranks that he doubts the PLA’s ability to handle a major conflict, such as the often-predicted invasion of Taiwan.
This could help to explain China’s extreme reaction to Japanese Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae saying last month that Japan would view an attack on Taiwan as a threat to its own survival. It might also explain why Xi became noticeably more reluctant to travel abroad over the past few years.
The Chinese Communist Party also likes to shake up complacent officials in the hinterlands with corruption purges. Occupied East Turkistan seems to lose a few top officials to “discipline violations” every three or four years. A few medium-level East Turkistan officials were probed for “serious violations of law and Party discipline” in 2019, for example.
Xinjiang is the home of the Uyghur Muslims. Xi Jinping paid a rare visit to the region in September for the 70th anniversary of the “founding” of the XUAR.
The Uyghurs have been ruthlessly oppressed by the Chinese government, killed, sterilized, imprisoned, and enslaved. The U.S. State Department denounced China’s abuse of the Uyghurs as “genocide” in 2021. The following year, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) went into effect, requiring all Chinese exporters to prove their products were not harvested or manufactured with forced labor from the Uyghurs.
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