Alice Han

Many of the officials targeted oversaw missile forces, weapons deployment, and nuclear modernization, raising new questions about instability inside the Chinese military.

At the exact moment, tensions with the US and Taiwan are rising.

Xi is trying to build a world-class fighting force, but he's also hollowing out large parts of its top leadership in the process.

James, this is fascinating for anyone who is deep in the weeds of China politics, but I sense that a lot of other people are also interested in the internal machinations.

Just to summarize, two of the most senior people in the PLA,

That's the People's Liberation Army.

And remember, this is a party apparatus that is designed to be the military forces of the party.

These are the two guys, Li Shangfu, who was the Minister of Defense, and Wei Fenghe, who was the commander of the PLA Rocket Force, which is effectively the artillery service.

So he was in charge of all the missiles, including intercontinental ballistic missiles.

missiles these are the two guys who just recently have been given a death sentence although there is a two-year reprieve and as you and i were talking earlier james it is likely that they will have uh those the death sentence commuted and have instead life imprisonment but james how do you see the importance of these recent moves in historical context and what do you think this means for the pla's battle readiness just two really easy questions yeah

Yeah, well, I had no idea about this, the prison side of things.

So, James, thank you so much for elucidating that.

It's fascinating.

Just to backtrack a little bit in terms of why these guys were taken out.

Now, there's speculation and reporting that

that the PLA rocket force scandal, which really erupted in 2023, was a series of investigations in response to high-level procurement corruption.

And this was in particular related to evidence that had been uncovered at the time that missiles had been filled with water rather than rocket fuel and that missile solos had not been properly built.

So in general, the takeaway from that is that there was this feeling that the PLA

Not only wasn't bad already, but there was a level of corruption that was impinging upon military preparedness and an ability to compete with, say, America in the future.

And on top of that, you know, officially, these two former military high level officials have been accused of accepting and giving bribes.