00:00Let's bring in Lynette Ong, Distinguished Professor of Chinese Politics and Director of the China Governance Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto.
00:08Thank you so much for joining us, Lynette.
00:10We have just this statement from the Communist Party saying that these members have been dismissed for serious crimes involving exceptionally large sums of money.
00:21And that's pretty much where it ends.
00:23Do we know anything further at this stage?
00:25It all feels like smoke and mirrors.
00:26Yeah, so when senior officials are removed from a Chinese Communist Party, they are usually charged with corruption, which is, you know, taking money or bribes and so forth.
00:38These are usually, this could include a number of things.
00:42And in this particular case, I think the speculation, as your video earlier has demonstrated, that it came on the eve of the fourth plenum, which is the central committee is going to discuss the country's economic plan and then make some nominations.
00:58So the speculation is rife that these people are not actually charged with corruption is actually part of President Xi's ongoing attempt to purge people who are not in his faction.
01:14Speak to me more on that, because it really does feel like it's a political purge as opposed to a genuine crackdown on corruption.
01:23Have similar instances like this taken place in the past with Xi that we can point to, or is this really unprecedented, just given the ranking of these officials who have now been dismissed?
01:36Sure. So the two people who have been purged this time, He Weidong is the number two person in the Central Military Commission, as well as Miao Hua, General Miao Hua, who is also part of the CMC rank pretty highly.
01:48And previously, two years ago, you have people like Li Xiangfu, who is also ranked very highly being purged.
01:56So this is not really the first time that the military has been cleaned up. It has been ongoing for a couple of years.
02:03But the question I think we should be asking ourselves is, these sort of political purges is usually fairly common in autocratic countries like China.
02:14But it usually happens at the beginning of someone's term, right? You want to consolidate power, you come into your office, you want to consolidate power so you can get things done.
02:25But political purges has been happening since 2013, and presidency has been in power for more than a decade.
02:33So you wonder, you know, since it has been going for so long, when is it going to end?
02:40I think overall, it signals to the public and internationally that perhaps he's not so secure about his own grip on power.
02:52And that's why he keep on putting people in place and then replace them not long after that.
02:57And overall, just keep on purging people, shows that, you know, this is a regime that is not terribly secure about its power,
03:06and is very much incontradictory to the sort of confident message that it is going to project, it is trying to project elsewhere.
03:14That's a very poignant element to this, because it begs the question, how sustainable is this if she continues to prioritize loyalty over competence?
03:23Yes, you know, I think having the loyalty of the military is absolutely important in the Communist Party, like, in the Communist regime, like China.
03:37But I think in the military, he will always prioritize loyalty over competence.
03:44On other type of political appointment, you have to kind of balance loyalty and competence.
03:50But even on the question of loyalty, he has appointed people and then purged people six months later.
03:56So people start questioning his judgment, which is why the whole question of legitimacy is now also in a bit of a question mark.
04:05It's all very interesting, but still so unclear for us common folk, if you can say,
04:12because we're not used to seeing at least what happens with these military personnel.
04:17We don't know anything about their immediate futures.
04:20Where are they headed to?
04:22And it's not just the military which has been affected by these kind of purges.
04:25We've also seen it in civilian offices before with Xi Jinping.
04:29Yes.
04:30In civilian office, one of the most high-profile cases was two years ago.
04:37So the former foreign minister, Ching Gang, very high profile, appointed as foreign minister and then removed not long after that.
04:49I think, you know, if it happens to the civilian officials, it doesn't look great.
04:56But if it happens to the military, I think you raise more eyebrows than in other offices, because in a country like China, when there is no clear succession plan,
05:07where President Xi has actually abolished the term limit, no one knows who's going to succeed him.
05:14So Xi needs to have absolute power.
05:17So in case anything happens to him, one will rightly question who will succeed him, who will have the control over the military.
05:27These will pose huge question to the stability and durability and fragility of the Chinese Communist Party, and will have implications on world politics.
05:39And implications surely on the plenum, which is to come, especially if you consider that He Wendong formerly led the Eastern Theater Command, which oversees operations against Taiwan.
05:50Yes, the Taiwan question may be an issue, but I suspect that his purging is not directly related to Taiwan.
06:01Taiwan is perhaps part of the presidency's reshuffling of the cards, that he really needs to put in people that he trusts.
06:11And whom he trusts today may not be indicative of whom he will trust six months later, which is part of a larger problem.
06:18Absolutely. So much to look ahead to, at least with the plenum coming up in the Chinese Communist Party.
06:24Linit, thank you so much for joining us.
06:26That was Linit Ong from the China Governance Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto.
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