A top Chinese military official has been removed from office for “serious violations of discipline”, Beijing said Thursday, the latest senior apparatchik to fall in a sweeping crackdown on graft in the country’s armed forces.
The ruling Chinese Communist Party “has decided to suspend Miao Hua from duty pending investigation”, Wu Qian, a spokesman for Beijing’s defence ministry, told a press briefing.
Wu did not provide further details about the charges against Miao, an admiral and a member of Beijing’s powerful Central Military Commission (CMC).
But “serious violations of discipline” are commonly used by officials in China as a euphemism for corruption.
Miao sat on China’s Central Military Commission alongside five other men, including President Xi Jinping at the top.
He headed the CMC’s Political Work Department, the top military body’s most important office.
Miao has been described as a “close ally” of Xi and a “trusted interlocutor” between the military and the party by Lyle Morris, a senior fellow at the Asia Society.
Beijing has deepened a crackdown on alleged graft in the armed forces over the past year, with Xi this month ordering the military to stamp out corruption and strengthen its “war-preparedness”.
The intensity of the anti-graft drive in the military has been partially driven by fears that it may affect China’s ability to wage a future war, Bloomberg reported citing US officials this year.
The removal of Miao reveals the “endurance of corruption and discipline issues across the system in the PLA, despite the strong efforts made by Xi,” one expert told AFP.
“I think the fact that these probes are still done, and done fairly openly and publicly, despite the obvious reputational hits, shows the resolve of Xi to really address and try to root it out,” said Dylan Loh, an assistant professor at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.
