If He Weidong (何衛東) has been purged, why?
This article follows on from last week’s piece suggesting that He has been purged. After weeks of rumors on Western social media that he was in trouble, the Chinese general missed two key public events. Then the Financial Times reported directly that he had been purged.
Many senior Chinese generals, and two defense ministers, have been “gone missing” in recent years, later to be investigated or charged with corruption and removed from their posts.
This was once unheard of for a member of the Central Military Commission, but Defense Minister Li Shangfu (李尚福) was removed in 2023, and Admiral Miao Hua (苗華) was suspended in 2024.
He Weidong now appears to have been purged like Miao, although this is still not confirmed by official Chinese sources. He would be the most senior military figure to have been purged, since he is a vice chair on the Central Military Commission.
Corruption was already an endemic problem in the Chinese military. There’s no reason to think that it has gotten worse under Xi. Indeed, since President Xi Jinping (習近平) has repeatedly launched anti-corruption campaigns, one might expect that it would have improved.
Many of those now being purged were elevated by Xi himself, including those elevated after the recent swathe of high level purges began. This has led to suggestions that the purges are more related to power struggles and factional politics within the Chinese military.
He is at the top of a set of people connected by Fujian, the 31st Group Army and Taiwan, according to Anushka Saxena, a research analyst at the Takshashila Institution in Bengaluru who focuses on the Chinese military and Chinese internal politics. Miao Hua and other purged figures were also a part of this grouping.
After Admiral Miao fell last year, Saxena predicted that He could be next. Because He had in some sense “brought along” many of the generals below him who have now been purged, it seemed likely that he would eventually be implicated in their corruption scandals.
From the factional politics perspective, the Central Military Commission used to be balanced between members of the Fujian clique and members of the Shaanxi gang. Xi is connected to the Fujian clique through his years working in the province. Shaanxi relationships with Xi are based on personal ties that go back to his father, party elder Xi Zhongxun (習仲勛).
If there was a genuine factional struggle between the two groups, and the Shaanxi gang is in the ascendancy, it could be that their attacks on the Fujian clique eventually spread to the very top, to He. Saxena described this as the “domino theory,” i.e. He would be the next to fall.
He Hongjun (何宏軍) is a likely candidate to be elevated to the Central Military Commission to replace those purged, according to Saxena. He Hongjun is the Deputy Head of the Political Work Department of the Central Military Commission, which was led by Miao before his downfall.
He Hongjun is also a member of the Shaanxi gang, someone who Saxena said “has Zhang [Youxia]’s (張又俠) fingerprints all over his career.” Zhang Youxia is the highest-ranking Shaanxi gang member, being the senior vice chairman of the Central Military Commission.
Another of the Shaanxi gang and current Central Military Commission member, Zhang Shengmin (張升民), could be elevated to the vice chair position that would be left empty by He Weidong, Saxena thought, although she was less confident about this.
Zhang is the Secretary of the Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Central Military Commission. Saxena said it is he who has been responsible for the corruption investigations that have toppled so many.
Why
This plausible chain of events — He Weidong out, He Hongjun in and Zhang Shengmin up — would leave the Central Military Commission completely dominated by the Shaanxi gang. In practice that would mean it was dominated by its most senior member, Vice Chairman Zhang Youxia.
If this is the answer, that it is factional politics completely orthogonal to actual corruption crimes, it creates a new question. Why is Xi allowing it?
Why would Xi let one of two competing power bases under him in the military gut the other? Especially since in doing so it would concentrate military power onto one single figure, Zhang Youxia.
The implication is that Xi has been unable to prevent this from happening. But that in turn has huge implications for Xi’s continued hold on power. This conclusion should thus be viciously interrogated.
Saxena noted Lin Xiangyang (林向陽), the current commander of the Eastern Theater Command and He Weidong’s immediate successor in that post, is also rumored to be in trouble. This has received far less attention but would also be explosive, given that at the time of his supposed purging he should have been overseeing the Strait Thunder military exercises around Taiwan.
So who is really at the wheel?
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