China has suspended a top military official and placed him under investigation for corruption, the defense ministry said, as leader Xi Jinping broadens a sweeping purge in the upper ranks of the world's largest military. Admiral Miao Hua, a member of the powerful Central Military Commission (CMC), China's top military body led by Xi, is under investigation for "serious violations of discipline" – a euphemism for corruption, Defense Ministry spokesperson Wu Qian said at a news conference Thursday. Miao, 69, heads the Political Work Department of the CMC. He is widely seen as a close protege of Xi, having served as a political officer in the army in the coastal province of Fujian when Xi was a local official there in the 1990s and early 2000s. The news of Miao's suspension and investigation comes a day after the Financial Times reported that China's Defense Minister Dong Jun had been placed under investigation for corruption, citing current and former US officials. The Defense Ministry spokesperson dismissed the report as "sheer fabrication." "Those rumor mongers harbor evil motives. China expresses strong dissatisfaction over such smears," he said. Xi has waged a sweeping crackdown on corruption in China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) since last year, focusing on the Rocket Force, an elite branch overseeing the country's nuclear and conventional missiles. The purge led to the downfall of several senior generals, including former defense minister Li Shangfu and his predecessor Wei Fenghe, who were expelled from the party in June over corruption allegations. The ongoing turmoil in the upper ranks of the military comes as Xi is seeking to make China's armed forces stronger, more combat-ready and more aggressive in asserting its disputed territorial claims in the region. As part of Xi's ambition to transform the PLA into a "world class" fighting force, China has poured billions of dollars into buying and upgrading equipment. Since last summer, more than a dozen high-level military officers and aerospace executives in the military-industrial complex have been stripped of their public roles. Most of the generals purged were linked to the Rocket Force or military equipment, including Li and Wei, the former defense ministers. Last summer, Li disappeared from public view after only months into the job, and weeks after a surprise shake-up of the leadership of the Rocket Force. He was removed from his post in October, without any explanation, and replaced by Dong, the current defense minsiter. In China, the defense minister is a largely ceremonial role, serving as the public face of military diplomacy with other countries. And unlike his predecessors, Dong was not appointed to the CMC, in a major break of tradition in recent decades. Miao, the latest top military official to be investigated, is seen as a political patron of Dong, who is also an admiral and once served as the top commander of the PLA Navy. A native of Fujian, a power base of Xi's, Miao rose through the ranks in the political departments of the military. In 2014, two years after Xi came to power, Miao received a major promotion to become the political commissar of the PLA Navy, overlapping with the time Dong served as the deputy chief of staff of the Navy. In 2017, Miao was promoted again to the director of the CMC's Political Work Department. Xi has made rooting out corruption and disloyalty a hallmark of his rule since coming to power in 2012, and the purges suggest that campaign is far from over within the military. "Corruption in China's military is not a case of a 'few bad apples.' It is part of 'doing business' in the PLA to a much greater extent than most other military organizations around the world, where the rule of law and checks and balances can serve to expose major acts of nepotism and corruption," said Lyle Morris, a foreign policy and national security fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute, on X. "Despite Xi's best efforts, corruption in the PLA will endure and bedevil Xi and his successor for the foreseeable future." — CNN
