Welcome to Foreign Policy’s China Brief.
The highlights this week: China announces a purge of military leaders, the Chinese Communist Party’s Fourth Plenum kicks off in Beijing, and fallout from a Chinese spy scandal continues in the United Kingdom.
China Announces Military Purges
Last Friday, China’s Ministry of National Defense announced the expulsion of nine top military leaders from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) due to “serious job-related crimes.” Among those expelled are Gen. He Weidong, a member of the Politburo and a vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, and Adm. Miao Hua, a top political commissar.
This wasn’t a dramatic overnight strike against Chinese President Xi Jinping’s foes, as some of the headlines have suggested. The leaders were arrested long ago, and the announcement is merely making it official. But why is it being revealed now, and what motivated these arrests in the first place?
Since mid-2023, Xi has been conducting serious military purges that follow a typical progression: Targets are arrested and indefinitely put into liuzhi, a form of interrogation and detention, and within a year, they are removed from official positions and expelled from the National People’s Congress, if applicable, before being kicked out of the CCP.
Making arrest announcements together is not uncommon, and the timing here coincides with the CCP’s Fourth Plenum, which began on Monday. Plenums are convocations, held seven times every five years, of the Central Committee, which is the 205-member group that heads the party—although true power is actually held by the 24-person Politburo and the Politburo’s even smaller seven-man Standing Committee. Xi may be hoping to kick off the important CCP event with a clear reminder of who’s in charge.
Though the diaspora rumor mill often fixates on the possibility of coups, I don’t think these purges attempted to frustrate one. The affected officers mostly worked in political and organizational capacities. The only person who could have posed a serious coup threat is Wang Chunning, who oversaw the People’s Armed Police—the paramilitary force that also runs much of the CCP’s internal security.
My best guess—with the usual caveats about how opaque both China’s top leadership and military are—is that corruption fears are driving Xi’s current purges.
After seeing how corruption hindered the Russian military in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, CCP leadership launched an investigation in July 2023 into the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Rocket Force and its procurement practices that exposed widespread graft and embezzlement.
The investigation seems to have exposed deep corruption in the PLA’s promotion system, centered around Miao and He Weidong, who oversaw promotions beginning in 2017. Such corruption was a major focus of Xi’s 2013-14 military purges, after it was revealed in 2010 that the CIA was paying its Chinese sources’ so-called promotion fees—the bribes required to rise up within the Chinese bureaucracy.
Notably, the latest round of purges targeted numerous officials appointed by Xi himself—some of whom were specifically tasked with cleaning up prior corruption. Wang Houbin, for instance, was appointed head of the PLA Rocket Force in July 2023 to replace former head Li Yuchao, who was ousted for corruption charges.
Xi may have seen these expulsions as a chance to further stamp his authority on the PLA. But no matter how many people Xi purges—without any transparency mechanisms or independent oversight for either the PLA or the CCP—the financial and political incentives for corruption remain as strong as ever.
What We’re Following
Fourth Plenum continues. What else is going to come out of the Fourth Plenum this week? It’s likely that some replacements for the purged military officials will be announced, especially for the currently understaffed Central Military Commission. In general, I would expect a fair amount of personnel changes, including announcements of other purges on the civilian side.
The plenum’s primary purpose is to define China’s next five-year plan, which will set the tone for the country’s economic strategy from 2026 to 2030 and will be officially announced in March. But a lot can happen between now and then.
For one thing, China could be drawn back into a full-blown trade war on Nov. 1 if U.S. President Donald Trump follows through on his latest threats of 100 percent tariffs. In the meantime, China is sticking to its guns on new rare-earth controls while keeping channels open with the United States before the temporary trade agreement expires on Nov. 10.
Rocket Force under scrutiny. As the latest military purges have exposed, the PLA Rocket Force, which is responsible for China’s rapidly expanding nuclear arsenal, is in serious political and reputational trouble. In addition to revelations of widespread corruption, it has now lost two consecutive commanders, and political commissar Xu Xisheng is also rumored to be on the chopping block.
The Rocket Force only dates to 2016; before then, it was known as the Second Artillery Corps, which lacked the equal status with the other military branches that the Rocket Force now enjoys. But if corruption problems are as severe as investigations have claimed, then there is a chance that the force could be reorganized in the near future.
That could mean anything from having its status reduced to having its functions redistributed among other branches of service.
U.K. spy fiasco. The collapse of the case against two British men accused of spying for China is still reverberating through the United Kingdom. After initial claims that the U.K. failed to categorize China as a national security threat, hampering the prosecution’s case, the government released witness statements last week that showed otherwise.
The new statements make the Crown Prosecution Service’s decision to drop the case even more confusing. It also comes as the U.K. government is wrapped up in another row, this time over China’s plans for a so-called mega-embassy that critics worry may be used as a base for espionage.
FP’s Most Read This Week
- Why the Democrats Are So Lost by Michael Hirsh
- What’s the U.S. Endgame in Venezuela? by Geoff Ramsey
- The Peace in Gaza Won’t Last by Stephen M. Walt
Tech and Business
Tax collection shift? China is reportedly considering a switch from collecting taxes at the point of production to the point of consumption. This idea has been proposed before, but it has gained steam as overproduction has become a major economic problem in recent years—partly due to local officials, desperate to boost tax revenues, offering heavy incentives to build new factories.
Switching tax models could finally push local officials to prioritize increasing consumption instead of underwriting manufacturing, but China has talked about boosting consumption for years and still lacks results to show for it. For a public that is already nervous about the economy, the move is unlikely to change spending habits.
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