The News
Chinese authorities expelled a former aerospace defense executive from the Communist Party for corruption, the latest in a series of graft-related removals at the top of Beijing’s military apparatus.
His ousting brings the number of top security officials and executives purged from China’s ranks in recent years to 18, including 14 generals, according to Reuters. Among the most high-profile was an admiral who sat on the People’s Liberation Army’s top committee headed by Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Beijing’s long-running anti-graft campaign makes clear that corruption is “an endemic problem” in China’s armed forces and that Xi is “serious” about rooting it out, a Brookings Institution expert argued, but also that “the persistence of corruption undermines Xi’s confidence in the PLA.”
