CNI Article 

4 July 2024 

The move of the Chinese Communist Party to expel General Wei Fanghe and General Li Shangfu from the CCP for corruption and initiate prosecution against them has rekindled the possibility that some of the long-range missiles under the command of the Rocket Force of the People’s Liberation Army have been filled with water instead of fuel and that the silo set up in the Xinjiang region to house some of these missiles has lids that do not fit properly; reports that Western observers had at one stage dismissed as too far-fetched. 

When General Wei and his successor General Li were sacked as Defence Minister of China in quick succession in 2023 and disappeared from public view, the world was searching for an answer to the question why. Officially, they had been accused of bribery; with no explanation offered.

 It was then that a report surfaced, quoting U.S. intelligence sources, that some of the long range missiles in the arsenal of China had been found to be filled with water and that a missile silo had a defective lid. 

While meeting the 2 defense ministers who were charged with corruption

In other words, a great scam was under way in the strategic Rocket Force of the PLA; raising serious doubts about the strike power of the Chinese armed forces and the question if the PLA was a paper tiger.

As the Centre for Strategic and International Studies wrote in January 25, 2024, in December 2023 “nine top military officials were removed in what was being called a ‘purge,’ including officials from the Strategic Rocket Forces that oversaw China’s nuclear-armed missiles.  
Subsequent reporting indicated the purge was due to ‘widespread corruption’ that has undermined ‘efforts to modernize the armed forces and raised questions about China’s ability to fight a war,’ according to U.S. Intelligence. Specifically, Chinese missiles were allegedly filled with water.” 

Experts had doubted if the report ascribed to U.S. intelligence was true. “There would be no reason to put water in the missiles unless it was deliberate sabotage. If it was deliberate sabotage, China would not just be purging this or that official. They would have been arrested, tried and shot. Sabotage or the destruction of strategic nuclear missiles is a very serious crime. The idea that some officials would just be dismissed from their job is not a response to anything of this level of criminal significance,” a columnist in the Asia Times wrote last January.

While meeting the leaders of the Chinese Communist Party

His suggestion was that the story of missiles being filled with water had been planted by the “Xi clique” as a red herring. According to him, President Xi is in trouble because of a power struggle within China. He is now using the ploy of a corruption probe to eliminate his competitors and anyone he thinks is a threat to his leadership. 

Significantly, both General Wei and General Li had been high-ups in the CCP hierarchy. Both had served as State Councillors, the top post in the Chinese Communist Party, and had been members of the Central Military Commission; the overall high command of the PLA headed by President Xi himself.

And there are plenty of reasons for President Xi to be in trouble. “There has been growing scepticism of Beijing’s reports of a robust expansion. China is plagued with symptoms of a sinking economy: deepening deflation, crumbling property prices, continuing debt defaults, a weakening currency, accelerating capital flight, and failing local governments,” Newsweek has observed.

Now, however, both the former Defence Ministers of China who have been expelled from the CCP are set to be prosecuted in what has been regarded as the worst scandal to hit the PLA, says the latest report from Beijing; belying conjectures that the two Generals have been let off leniently. 

Xinhua, the state-run news agency of China, has reported: “Li Shangfu betrayed his original mission, betrayed the trust of the Party Central Committee and Central Military Commission and caused great damage to the party cause and national defence;” grave charges indeed which, according to observers, may mean life imprisonment for General Li; a Chinese aerospace engineer who had headed the all important Rocket Force of the PLA and had been selected for the top defence post by President Xi himself. 

While seeing Xi Jinping

Earlier, he had spent decades in the Equipment Division which looked after procurements for the PLA. He went missing in 2023.

The crimes of General Wei were said to be extremely serious, with a highly detrimental impact and tremendous harm, according to the findings of an investigation. General Wei took over at the helm of the Second Artillery Corps of the PLA in 2012 and continued to lead the key part of the nuclear arsenal of China after it was restructured as the Rocket Force in 2015. 

In the typical style of the CCP, the charge sheets against the two generals of the PLA are verbose but vague. According to Xinhua, their actions have failed the trust of the CCP Central Committee and the Central Military Commission, have severely contaminated the political environment of the military; bringing enormous damage to the cause of the party, the development of national defence and the armed forces, and the image of senior officials.

The sacking of the two generals and their disappearance had coincided with the dismissal of nine other generals from the National People’s Congress in December 2023, including previous and serving commanders of the PLA Rocket Force and the Air Force; as well as several Central Military Commission officials with the Equipment Development Department. Their summary dismissals had sent shockwaves in the Chinese military.

Corruption in the Chinese military has raised questions about the ability of the PLA to achieve military objectives and attain the target of “great rejuvenation” as envisioned by President Xi. The Federation of American Scientists has stated in an open letter to U. S. Defence Secretary Lloyd Austin that these flaws, if true, would compromise military operations of China and raised concern that the information of the U.S. government on China’s arsenal may not be accurate or reliable. However, it is understood that the American military is not letting the guard down and is not changing anything about its current nuclear policy.