Shi Jimpings fired his top military general, John Yushah amid rumors of treason, corruption and scandal.
Now we have got these sort of dribs and drabs of rumors coming out, and the statement seem to first of all, implay corruption in a broader sense. Also, you know, one of the most wild rumors that's been put out is that he was selling or giving nuclear weapons secrets to the Americans, which seemed frankly pretty unlikely.
It's a stunning sacking in an ongoing purge of the armed forces. But the crackdown goes even further. Around one million Chinese have been disciplined in She's drive against corruption. So with the military and crisis and she clearing the decks, what does this mean for China's ambition to take Taiwan. I'm Nicole Johnston and you're listening to seven AM Today. Expert in US Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School and co host of the China podcast Face Off, Rana
Mitter on She's Purge for Power. It's Thursday, January twenty nine. Rana, thanks for speaking with me today. Let's start with Jiang Yoshah. Who is he and what do we know about why he was sacked.
So Jiang Yoshah was until just a few days ago, the first vice chairman of the CMC Central Military Commission of China. Probably the best way to understand that is that he was the most senior uniformed officer. But just a couple of the terms that had been used to explain General jog and also one of his colleagues who
was also fun at the same time. One was endangering the Communist Party's ruling foundation, the exerting of vile influence on the part, and perhaps the most significant one, undermining the Chairman's authority, meaning Chairman Chiten Ping, of course, and when they did this, they said that they needed to eliminate ideological toxins and promote organizational healing, so some pretty fruity language being used there. This is pretty much unprecedented.
So the Central Military Commission has generally had six people on it, and really it's very rare for anyone to disappear in an untimely fashion from the Central Military Commission, let alone what's happened in the last year or two, which is of the six, not one, not two, but five have gone basically been purged on the grounds of corruption or other charges. Juanui certainly the most spectacular, the
most senior. Nobody thought he was vulnerably clearly was if I were, you know, the sixth one there Jun Jarmin. Now I'd been a nervous terms of where that might be might be going, but certainly in terms of thinking about, you know, the real top ranks of China's military being swept away the guests so far as just a guess, but let's put it out there. The next five who get put into those positions will be even more people who basically do what she Jenpin tells them to do.
There's also a personal element to this. She's fired one of his own because they're both considered princelings in the Communist Party from similar backgrounds, aren't they.
That's right, there are long standing family connections between the two that go back decades. Yet another reason why people you know, probably like me, were under the impression that, well, actually, it seems very unlikely that he's going to get kicked out because there's such a long history between them. But of course, often family or cohort or peer relationships could be the most bitter as well as the most close. At least in this case, it appears that that family closeness hasn't saved them.
The seriousness in touch corruption in China is clear. President Shujin Peng, who is also a General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, says corruption threatens the party's very survival and he's vowed to fight it at every level, or as he put it, from the tigers to the flies.
Rana, just broadly, could you give us a bit of a sense of how widespread this campaign of purging has been since she came to power.
Very broadly speaking, purging has been very widespread under the title of anti corruption, that's the phrase that you used in the institution called the CDIC, the Central Discipline Inspection Commission, as a kind of special and super FBI, with absolutely no recourse for people who are arrested under it. They can hold you in communicado for I think these six months, probably longer than that if they really want to. And it's been used to strike terror into the heart of
corrupt officials in particular. But actually the taking down of civilian officials has been going on now for well over a decade. And because we think about, you know, the ones who are perhaps at the very top elite level, those the ones who catch headlines in the western world. But actually you can see the way down at the provincial level and elsewhere. There's been a tremendous amount of anti corruption activity going on.
As you said, Shi Jimping has said that this is all about weeding out that corruption, or the ross, as he calls it. But is this really more about consolidating total control for him over the armed forces.
I think it is almost certainly about that, and it has a rather ironic implication the short and the long term, because in the short term it might actually make the prospect of a war between China and said the United
States actually less likely in the near future. Why because if Jiinping thinks that this is the time to really concentrate inwards, to be purging the armed forces at the senior level and beyond to remake them in a different image, maybe his own image, that's not the best moment at which, on the grounds of morale, preparation and so forth, to
launch any kind of really major military campaign. I think there's unlikely to be any kind of massive comportation this year anyway, because both the United States and China have a best interest in the April summer between Si Jinping and Donald Trump, going well, But that doesn't say much about where things might be in three five years time, when presumably the purges will have taken effect, where the new cadre of Chinese military leaders will be even more
in Cheese image than they were for and then the idea that maybe they will be much more beholden to him rather than the party structures might be more significant.
Coming up. What she's military shakedown means for Taiwan, Rana, Let's talk firepower. I saw some of it myself at the jew High Air Show in southern China about.
A year ago.
To hang out at the coolest places, Nicole, What can I said?
I know, so, as we know, they're expanding shipbuilding, missiles, nuclear drones. Could you take us through some of that firepower? What have they got?
Yeah? For instance, the development in the last couple of years or so of greater capacity to do amphibious attacks, you know, land and sea combined using new kinds of rolling barges and other equipment of that sort, might or might not indicate that an assault on Taiwan was being
prepared for. Drone technology is something that China is really continuing to perfect and one of the testing grounds they have is essentially giving the technology, not the drones themselves, so to be clear about that, but some of the technology that can shape it to the Russians for their war in Ukraine, but also a space force. And Donald Trump in fact to established the space force in his first term on the US side, but China's had one
for quite some time unclear forces. And again we see the new building of missile silos up in Gansu Province in the northwest of China. And cyber cyber warfare is you know, the warfare of the mid twenty first century.
All of this was on display at the massive military parade that we had in Beijing last year. Putin Kim Jong un was there. What was the message that she was trying to center the world there.
One of the things that was very notable about the military parade was quite how much it concentrated on hardware. I mean huge numbers of missiles, tanks, other pieces of
equipment being paraded through Gentleman Square. But the vast majority of what we saw was very much about China today being a fierce nationalistic country that no longer is willing to even contemplate going back to the days of World War two and around then, when China was a victim in the world, instead reconstituting itself as one of the hegemon's, one of the leaders of the world, and that military equipment that we saw being paraded through was in some
senses a symbolic but very very clear indication of how the capacity to use force is now something that China has developed as part of its own sense of its own identity and has no intention I suspect of ever letting go again.
Humanity again has to choose between peace and war, theirlog and confrontationing win win corporation and zero sum game.
The world's been waiting and watching to see if and when China will take Taiwan by force, even though China, for its part, continues to insist that what it wants is peaceful reunification. But how does this purge actually affect China's readiness for war?
I think that in the unlikely event of a full scale invasion of Taiwan, I do think it's relatively unlikely because it would be extraordinarily difficult maneuver to bring off. But assuming that the Chiping and the military leadership came together and actually wanted to do it. The military purges make it much less likely in the short term if you're going to undertake an operation that demands that level of skill and ability to pull off a huge end.
Makes D Day look fairly amateur, I would say, in some ways, because the distance is involved, then you want to have your armed forces on their best possible form. Right in the middle of reeling from the you know, continuing bang bang bang are the loss of these top figures and in the many mid level figures as well, I would say that this does not seem the best state of the armed forces that would be in a position to undertake an action like the invasion of Taiwan.
Doesn't mean all that it would never never happen, but I think that recent events, including the purchase, making the short term much less likely.
But at the same time, we have had these military drills escalating around Taiwan over the last couple of years.
Yes, we have, and I often think that it's when China really pushes hard and makes these huge gestures that actually it's just a sign saying we haven't forgotten about you. We know we're still there, but there's an extent to which there's a performance element, a pretty frightening performance element to these continuous military exercises. And certainly people on Taiwan, where I was just a few weeks ago, perhaps some of got used to it. Not to say that this
isn't dangerous. I mean again, nobody, certainly including me, can say that it's impossible that a military assault on Taiwan, or a naval blockade or quarantine or other kind of gray zone tactic might not be used on Taiwan, but it's unlikely to have them.
So Rana, what does this spectacular military downfall at the very top tell us about how she is running the armed forces and running the rest of China?
I think it's fair to say that he's now running the armed forces as he has been running the rest of China, which is worth an increasing sense of quite personalistic dominance. Now it's important to make distinctions. Vladimir Putin is probably the best example of someone who has reconstituted
the entire government around him. She hasn't either tried nor I think is easy able to do that, because the party's structures and other people within it still actually remain very very powerful in many senses, but the shift over the last fifteen years or so has been noticeable. Back in the twenty twenty twenty tens, China took pride in the fact that it had what it called a collective leadership. She didn't think did away with all of that when
he came to power in twenty twelve. Having got the position, he turned on sixpence very very quickly and started to really purge power centers that might push back against him. That was one of their very first pushes against the PLA start to happen. So I think we've already seen the blueprint really over the last fifteen years that as
China is a more personalistic one, it's more nationalistic. It's one that as Donald Trump himself has observedble that once quite admiringly, has created a sort of strong man type of vision of what government is that actually has proved increasingly attractive to leaders elsewhere who seek to emulate that kind of action.
Rana, thanks for joining me today.
Thanks ver much, Nicole, it's been a pleasure.
Also in the news, David Little Proud looks said to face a challenge for the Nationals leadership. On Monday. Rogue backbencher Colin Boyce says he will move a spill motion after Little Proud's decision to remove the nets from the coalition last week. Boyce claims the split political suicide for
the National Party. Little Proud fended off a leadership challenge from Matt Canavan, who has far more support than Voice after the last election, and their affairs of the Reserve Bank could be primed for an interest rate hike after a higher than expected rise in inflation, a big jump in prices for tourists travel, and the end of the electricity subsidy saw annual inflation rise to three point eight percent. All four major banks are now tipping a rate rise
next week. I'm Nicole Johnston. It's a seven am. Thanks for listening.