D6 years after coming to power, does Xi Jinping really control the People’s Liberation Army (PLA)? The replacement, at the end of July, of the two generals who led the missile force and the disappearance, since August 29, of the Minister of Defense, Li Shangfu, raise questions.
However, for a decade, the Chinese media have systematically repeated that Xi occupies three positions: he is general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, president of the Republic, but also president of the Central Military Commission (CMC). It is this organization which directs the PLA, much more than the Ministry of Defense, which mainly has a representation role with regard to foreign countries. In the Chinese system, the army depends on the Communist Party, not the state. If Li Shangfu is one of the seven members of the CMC, he is not even one of the two vice-presidents.
When Xi came to power in October 2012, the PLA was in trouble. “In the 1990s and 2000s (…), the PLA drifted and became more independent and depoliticized. Corruption and embezzlement – implemented through the management of bars, brothels, transport companies, the misappropriation of funds and resources, the sale of hierarchical promotions – was widespread within the ranks and had even reached the top “writes Bates Gill, director of the China Analysis Center at the Asia Society Policy Institute and author of Daring to Struggle. China’s Global Ambitions under Xi Jinping (“Dare to Fight. China’s Global Ambitions under Xi Jinping”, Oxford University Press, 2022, untranslated).
Numerous disciplinary sanctions
In 2014, Xi Jinping arrested two generals, Xu Caihou and Guo Boxiong, vice-presidents of the CMC, which he himself had chaired for two years. In total, some 13,000 military personnel have been subject to disciplinary sanctions over the past ten years, including more than 70 general officers and a dozen generals. At the same time, Xi is fundamentally reorganizing the army to break up the baronies and put the Military Commission back at the center of the system. If he gives more resources to the army, he reduces its numbers by 300,000 people “so that the active force is maintained at 2 million” of men. So many challenges to his position which do not earn him any friends within the army.
But the events of this summer seem to indicate that the reorganization is far from over. According to Washington, an investigation has been launched against Li Shangfu, suspected of corruption. Before becoming a minister, Li Shangfu, an engineer by training, was one of the fathers of the Chinese space program. In 2017, he was appointed head of CMC’s equipment development department. A sort of super-director of procurement for the army. For having, in this position, supervised the acquisition of Russian equipment, he was also placed under sanction by the United States.
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