By Laurie Chen
BEIJING (Reuters) – The Chinese president Xi Jinping said there were “deep-rooted problems” in the Chinese military’s politics, ideology, working style and discipline, state TV reported on Wednesday, amid an ongoing military anti-corruption purge.
“There should be no hiding place for corrupt elements in the military,” Xi said this week at a military-political working conference in the northwestern city of Yanan, the founding stronghold of the Chinese Communist Party.
“Caders at all levels, especially the senior cadres, must show up and have the courage to put aside their prestige and expose their shortcomings. They need to do some deep self-reflection… make serious improvements, solve problems that are at the root of their thinking. “
The political tests currently facing the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) are “complicated and complex” and the national situation, the party situation and the military situation are all undergoing “complex and profound changes,” Xi said in a keynote speech to military cadres including Zhang Youxia and He Weidong, the second and third commanders of the PLA.
Xi also pledged to “enrich the toolbox for punishing new forms of corruption and hidden corruption” and strengthen supervision of senior executives.
China’s military has undergone a major anti-corruption purge since last year, with nine PLA generals and at least four aerospace defense industry executives removed from the national legislative body so far, including from the strategic PLA Rocket Force which oversees tactical and nuclear missiles. A handful of other defense industry bosses have been fired from the country’s political advisory body.
Former Chinese Defense Minister Li Shangfu was removed from the website of the Central Military Commission, the party’s top military command body, in February after being removed without explanation as defense minister last October. Reuters reported that he was under investigation for corrupt procurement of military equipment.
The three-day conference, which ended Wednesday, was the first of its kind since 2014, when Xi held another military-political working conference in Gutian on the anniversary of a meeting that challenged Mao Zedong’s control of the Red Army, the predecessor of the PLA , consolidated.
It comes weeks before the long-delayed Third Plenum, a key meeting of the Communist Party’s central committee where economic reforms will be discussed and disgraced members formally removed. The exact dates have not yet been announced. Li Shangfu and deposed former Foreign Minister Qin Gang remain members of the Central Committee.
The purges are a setback for Xi, who has poured billions into buying and developing equipment as part of a modernization drive to build a “world-class” military by 2050 – as military tensions in the South China Sea and Strait of Taiwan have become increasingly larger. loaded.
Since coming to power in 2012, he has launched a widespread fight against corruption among the Communist Party and government officials, with the PLA being one of the main targets.
The Chinese Ministry of Defense vowed last year to ‘crack down on any corrupt official’.
(Reporting by Laurie Chen and Beijing newsroom; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Sharon Singleton)
