Another Chinese Military Official Under Fire

Welcome to Foreign Policy’s China Brief.

The highlights this week: Another top Chinese military official faces a disciplinary case, European officials accuse the crew of a Chinese ship of sabotaging Baltic undersea cables, and officials in Hunan province say they have uncovered a record-breaking gold deposit.

Top Military Official Investigated

A top-level Chinese military official, Miao Hua, is under investigation for “serious violations of discipline”—almost inevitably a prequel to detention, expulsion from the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and criminal charges.

Miao was the director of the Political Work Department within the Central Military Commission, a party body that oversees the political and cultural activities of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). He would be the highest-level military official to face a disciplinary case since the latest round of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s military purges began last year.

Curiously, the day before Miao’s case was announced, the Financial Times reported that Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun was under investigation for corruption. Dong replaced Li Shangfu, who was removed from office last year and expelled from the CCP in June amid corruption charges likely related to his ties to the PLA Rocket Force, along with his predecessor, Wei Fenghe.

If the Times reporting holds true, it would make China’s defense ministry seem unlucky—even by the standards of Xi’s rule, during which numerous top officials have fallen.

Yet the Chinese government strongly denies that Dong is under investigation, with a foreign ministry spokesperson calling the reporting “groundless” and a defense ministry spokesperson describing it as “pure fabrications.” This probably means that Dong is in the clear; when a Chinese political figure is in actual trouble, officials’ answers are far more evasive.

It is possible that the Times’ sources—U.S. officials—simply got this one wrong. Despite their top titles, Chinese government ministers are subordinate to their party counterparts, whose roles can seem opaque and bureaucratic by comparison, even to Western intelligence analysts.

Maybe someone got confused about which top Chinese defense official was under investigation; that is plausible in the whisper game of intelligence leaks. Dong may have also been caught up in the investigation into Miao but survived. An admiral and a former commander of the PLA Navy, Dong may have been linked to Miao due to the latter’s service as the navy’s top political commissar from 2014 to 2017.

It’s also possible that there was an attempt by a political rival to bring down Dong that failed—or even a power struggle between Dong and Miao in which Dong came out on top. It’s hard to climb China’s military ladder with clean hands; there is usually something that an investigation could uncover. Who survives depends on connections, not evidence.

Xi has made a target of the military since the beginning of his rule, when he prosecuted even retired generals. The military is one of few possible alternate power bases to the CCP, to the extent that it is separate from the party at all. Miao, for example, was only briefly a soldier after joining the PLA at age 14; he has spent nearly his whole career as a political commissar.

But the military is also genuinely corrupt—a problem that repeated purges haven’t solved. That corruption ranges from petty (such as the trade in military license plates) to extreme (such as massive embezzlement within the Rocket Force). China’s expenditures on the military in the last two decades have created plentiful opportunities.

Xi has become very sensitive to corruption in the military amid the Ukraine war, perhaps following Russia’s lead. The political leadership likely isn’t just worried about the effects of corruption on battlefield readiness, but it also sees economic and security issues as interconnected—and fears that figures such as Miao are weak links.

What We’re Following

Undersea cable crisis. European intelligence officials have accused the crew of a Chinese ship of deliberately sabotaging undersea cables in the Baltic Sea. The Yi Peng 3 is now surrounded by European ships in international waters, and Sweden has asked China to provide “clarity about what has happened.” That is unlikely to be forthcoming: As FP’s Elisabeth Braw wrote last month, determining the ship’s involvement will be hard.

The Yi Peng 3 is a commercial vessel carrying Russian fertilizer. If its crew was involved in severing undersea cables, there is a chance that it was an independent operation—with the ship paid by Russian intelligence, rather than a Chinese state plot.

If China was directly involved, that would cross a line in its willingness to commit sabotage on Russia’s behalf. But it may also have been a test: Taiwan’s digital connection to the rest of the world depends on 15 undersea cables, and China already carried out a small-scale sabotage operation there to isolate the outpost of Matsu.

Hunan gold discovery. Hunan province’s Geological Bureau announced in late November that it had found a gold deposit totaling an estimated 1,000 metric tons, which would make it the largest in the world, potentially worth $83 billion. However, mining experts are skeptical, suggesting that the deposit—or at least the parts that are reachable—may be considerably smaller.

China is the biggest gold producer in the world, with the industry growing to match domestic demand. But the trade is shrouded in secrecy, as it is a key state interest. If Hunan officials are exaggerating in the service of institutional reputation, it will be difficult to find out.

FP’s Most Read This Week

• Noam Chomsky Has Been Proved Right by Stephen M. Walt
• The Pitfalls for Europe of a Trump-Putin Deal on Ukraine by Fredrik Wesslau
• Xi Jinping Doesn’t Have an Answer for China’s Demographic Crisis by Lizzi C. Lee

Tech and Business

U.S. chip restrictions. In what is likely to be the Biden administration’s final round of semiconductor sanctions on China, the United States has banned the export of a new class of memory chips used largely for advanced artificial intelligence purposes. China has promised “resolute measures” in response.

The moves may not stir that much ire: Beijing is more cautious about AI models than Washington, and it is reluctant to jump on the hype-driven frenzy of the last two years. That is in part because errors—either factual or political—are a risk of large language models such as ChatGPT.

But Xi also distrusts the virtual economy and has expressed a desire to keep China rooted in the material, such as the six areas he emphasized in a key June speech: integrated circuits, industrial machine tools, basic software, advanced materials, scientific research instruments, and seed sources.

Key economic conference. China’s annual Central Economic Work Conference, which sets key targets such as GDP growth and stimulus plans, will reportedly be held next week. Hope for further economic stimulus has already driven Chinese stocks higher—but in a continuous cycle, it is only likely to lead to disappointment for investors.

China faces strong economic headwinds. Even according to official figures, it will miss its target of 5 percent GDP growth this year. But with Donald Trump set to return to the White House, Beijing’s main priority won’t be standards of living or job growth. It will be economics as a subset of national security—a long-term focus under Xi.