China's PLA Navy Dismissed Admirals in Senior-Level Purge

Three senior People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy officers were among a group of nine Four Star officers whose dismissal was announced by the Chinese Ministry of Defense on October 17.

Admiral Miao Hua had been head of the Central Military Commission's (CMC) Political Work Department, the organization within the PLA responsible for upholding conformity to Communist Party of China (CPC) doctrine. This activity is synonymous with oversight of personal loyalty to the personality of President XI and his particular interpretation of CPC ideology. Dismissed alongside him was Admiral Yuan Huazhi, a marine officer, until recently head of the Political Works Department for the PLA Navy. Admiral Wang Houbin was dismissed from his post as commander of the PLA Rocket Force, but he had previously been Deputy Commander of the PLA Navy from 2019-23 and had held senior operational positions in both the East and South Fleets.

The most senior officer dismissed was CMC Vice Chairman General He Weidong. General He Hongjun, deputy head of the CMC Political Work Department, was unusually a senior officer from Tibet, and managed to commit suicide before his dismissal announcement. Two other of the senior officers had been holding operational posts, General Lin Xiangyang in command of the PLA Eastern Theater, and General Wang Chunning in command of the PLA’s Armed Police.

Many of those dismissed had only recently been promoted. Most were considered to be members of the Fujian clique, a group considered to be closely aligned and loyal to President Xi Jinping personally. The announcement confirms rumours concerning some of those dismissed, which had been circulating since April.

All the dismissals, coupled with expulsions from the CPC, were attributed to disciplinary violations and allegations of corruption, an implausible generic explanation given the spread of posts of those dismissed. A more logical explanation is that this group of officers - mostly concerned with political work within the PLA - were the leading representatives of a faction within the CPC which had begun to have misgivings about the political direction of the CMC Chairman, President Xi Jinping. Alternatively, the group may not have been sufficiently effective in quelling 'alternative' thinking to the current version of CPC orthodoxy. There have been suggestions that within the PLA, there is a school of thought opposed to President Xi's plans to use blunt military force to invade Taiwan.

The announcement, highly unusual in itself, only covered the purging of senior officers at Four Star rank, the highest officer level within the PLA. It would be a safe assumption that there were other dismissals of more junior officers aligned with the seniors who were dismissed, dismissals that will reach down into the operational elements of the PLA Navy and other branches of the PLA. Rather than a plot, the purge seems to be a move on President Xi's part to suppress and put an end to debate within the CPC on alternative approaches to his chosen hardline path.