China Center Program Manager Shane Leary joins Miles Yu to discuss the new PLA purges, rumored for the past few weeks but confirmed on the eve of PLA day, a national holiday in China celebrating the militaries founding. They turn to the 2023 World University Games held in China, and how Xi Jinping used this opportunity for political messaging. Finally, they discuss a new survey from the Pew Research Center, which reveals that China’s international reputation has reached a historic low. Follow the China Center's work at: https://www.hudson.org/china-center
China Center Program Manager Shane Leary joins Miles Yu to discuss the new PLA purges, rumored for the past few weeks but confirmed on the eve of PLA day, a national holiday in China celebrating the militaries founding. They turn to the 2023 World University Games held in China, and how Xi Jinping used this opportunity for political messaging. Finally, they discuss a new survey from the Pew Research Center, which reveals that China’s international reputation has reached a historic low.
Follow the China Center's work at https://www.hudson.org/china-center and subscribe to our newsletter China Digest.
Miles Yu:
Welcome to China Insider, a podcast from Hudson Institute's China Center.
Shane Leary:
It's Tuesday, August 1st. I'm Shane Leary, program manager of the China Center here at Hudson Institute. And before we begin, I'd like to pass it off to our director of Miles Yu who has an announcement of a new project we're launching here at the center.
Miles Yu:
Shane, thank you very much. Over the past several months we have been hosting this China Insider podcast, we have received great responses from our listeners. Thank you very much for your encouragement and support. Now, some of listeners have told us that they would really prefer to have a Chinese version of the weekly podcast of China Insider, and we thought that was a great idea. On the other hand, we do have a problem with our manpower. So what we have decided is beginning with this week, we're going to try some kind of a new experiment that is instead of doing a exactly duplicate of this China Insider in Chinese language, we're going to have a monthly, roughly monthly review and question and answers session in Chinese. So hopefully that will recapture some of the major issues that we talked in the previous several weeks. We also try to answer some of the questions on the issues raised by the listeners and hopefully this will be a good and successful venture. And thank you for your continuing support.
Shane Leary:
So if you have any colleagues, friends or family who speak or read Chinese that would be interested in this, please pass the episode along to them.
Miles Yu:
Just to remind our listeners, every episode of China Insider will have this English transcript posted on our website. Please check it out and also for the new Chinese version, monthly Chinese version of review and recap. And we will have a Chinese transcript also to be posted on our website.
Shane Leary:
And with that we'll transition into today's episode. For our English listeners, we have three topics for today. The first is the new PLA purge, which comes to light on the eve of PLA Day, a national holiday in China celebrating the military's founding. The second is the 2023 World University Games held in China and how Xi Jinping uses this opportunity for political messaging. And the third is a new survey from the Pew Research Center, which reveals that China's international reputation has reached a historic low Miles, how are you?
Miles Yu:
Very good, Shane. Nice to be with you again.
Shane Leary:
Wonderful to be with you again. So today is a national holiday in China, PLA Day, or the birthday of the People's Liberation Army. In the background though, there are some rumors of military purges, which have been circulating for a few weeks now. It seems as if a new anti-corruption campaign may be underway. Miles, could you briefly tell us a bit about this holiday, what it looks like in China, and then shed some light on the rumors of military purges?
Miles Yu:
August 1st is always the p l a day normally celebrated with the great fanfare. This year is no exception, the rumors of sorting all over the place because there appear to be a lot of things going on within the Chinese Rocket Force, which is their strategic command handles all its ballistic and conventional missiles. It turns out, actually this is not rumors anymore, less than 48 hours ago, there was a major development confirming all this rumors. As true, the incumbent commander of the PLA Rocket Force General has been relieved. There's no announcement, but there's a new guy because as I said, less than 48 hours ago on the eve of the August 1st PLA Day, Xi Jinping showed up at the promotion ceremony promoting two senior officers to the rank of full General. And the two promotees are PLA Rocket Forces New Commander General who has and PLA Rocket Forces' new political commissar General.
Now that means the incumbent commander is gone, so he's vanished, he's gone. So this is a really, really big political earthquake within the PLA for two reasons. Number one, obviously is the unceremonious removal of the commander from the top command of China's Strategic Force. So that's not a rumor. Another thing that's very important to notice that there will be another round of a massive purge through the chain of command within the PLA Rocket Force because that's historical pattern. The reason is very simple because the two new bosses for the PLA Rocket Force are from outside of Rocket Force. Neither of those two has a very service background within the Rocket Force, which was previously known as the second artillery. The new commander is from the Chinese Navy. The Political Commissar is from Chinese Air Force. You can imagine their first job will be to purge all those senior officers under the now purged former commander. So this is history repeats itself. So this is a very, very fascinating stuff to watch.
Shane Leary:
We've spoken before about how necessary it is for the party to maintain control over the PLA and from the CCPs perspective they would like the party and military to fit together like a hand and a glove. But then the consistency of these purges points to a friction between the military and the party. Is this just paranoia on behalf of she or is there a real tension within the PLA that he needs to account for?
Miles Yu:
That's a very good question because of what you just said points to a profound and unsolvable dilemma of PLA modernization that is being expert while still being red. Because if you notice that the officers that have been purged within the Chinese Rocket Force, all of them are professional officers renowned for their professional and technical competence. None of them is a political commissars. So this all started in late April, former PLA Rocker Force Deputy Commander Major General and another Deputy Commander, were both arrested or rumored to be arrested, which is very likely to happen now as to PLA Rocket Force Commander, he was rumored to be arrested on June 26th, which nowadays today, I mean it looks very likely to have happened. Now on July 6th, just a few weeks ago, the third deputy commander of the Rocket Force Major General died suddenly at his home, and this is reported, he died. Now internal narrative is that he died of a brain hemorrhage. But the very interesting thing is at his funeral, one of his former colleagues read a eulogy that says that he died of suicide. So this is perfectly matched the narrative that his boss command had been arrested in late June. So a new round of purges going on. Now it is all plausible that the Xi Jinping wants to purge a few professional officers to say to the military that training and skills are not the most important thing in the PLA, but political loyalty to him and to the communist ideology is. Maybe he thinks that the PLA Rocket Force does too much of professional development, not enough of ideological correctness. If you know anything about the PLA history, all major military purges in the history of PLA resolved around this issue of how to strike a balance of being red and being expert at the same time.
I mean the purges of two former defense ministers, [one] in 1950s and [another] in 1970s, all because of this. Let me just read the one thing that's very interesting. On July 26th, Xi Jinping went around to another theater, which is a Western theater command, and he made a very important speech. And in that speech he stressed the paramount importance of the party commands the gun, cardinal principle. And that is a quote, “we must ensure that the party must control our military through the brains of all soldiers, tightly strengthening our political and organizational grip over the troops, and we must focus our attention on their Party Secretaries within the top military commands making top commanders set an example of impeccable standard with the enhanced abilities of political judgment, political ardor, and of political implementation.
Xi Jinping is a political animal. He's a general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. I mean no more, no less. This also poses a huge embarrassment for the PRC worldwide. There's no denial, there's no official comment from PRC spokesperson. In fact, each year the Chinese Embassy here in Washington DC throws a huge party to celebrate the PLA Day. This year's no exception except it will be so embarrassing for the Chinese ambassador, new ambassador to the United States, to even show up to face the questions. So he conveniently on the eve of the Embassy’s huge party, he injured himself during a bicycle ride and he basically excused himself from even showing up for this huge shindig. Now there has been a lot of speculation about why there is rocket force shakeup and some pointed out to the release of the US Air Force Report.
Back in last October, the United States Air Force War College down in Maxwell, Alabama has an institute called the China Aerospace Studies Institute. They released a report in last October, something like the PLA Rocket Force Organization in which there was a detailed analysis and identification of the Rocket Force units and the chain of command. And allegedly, this caused a big shock within the Chinese military because how this information was leaked out, it's mostly from the open sources. So I mean they're paranoia. My view of this, this may have more to do with the Xi Jinping’s increased paranoia about professional military office loyalty to him than this particular report. Xi's paranoia has increased exponentially after the Wagner revolt in Russia. So military royalty to the supreme leader is very, very supreme.
Shane Leary:
As they're doing these purges, are they doing anything to mitigate the loss of expertise? I mean, it seems to me for a country that's ostensibly preparing for war, it's entirely imprudent to sacrifice technical expertise and capability for the sake of loyalty. Do they simply just deal with the consequences of that or is there something they do to mitigate this?
Miles Yu:
That’s why I say it is a profound unsolvable problem for the PLA. So if you balance being red and being expert, the Chinese leadership has never about an eye sacrificing being expert because political loyalty is very important. If you know how much time the Chinese military throughout the rank spending on each day on political study, loyalty affirmation activities, it's astonishing. That's why one of the fundamental difference between a Chinese party army and the Western Democratic military forces lies in precisely this particular point that is Chinese military is a Chinese communist party army that places a premium primacy on political loyalty and ideological correctness rather than professional proficiency and skillset. If you look at the promotion standards, that's very, very clear. So this is why within the Chinese and military there is this profound and very sharp conflict. Xi Jinping promote a lot of political commisars. I can guarantee you there must be a lot of disenchantment and resentment within the professional military ranks.
Shane Leary:
Switching gears to China's relationship with the international community more broadly - this week the Biennial World University games is underway in Chengdu, which will run until August 8th. Student athletes from 120 nations are competing over a week and a half in an Olympic style competition. These games have been suspended for two years. The Chengdu games were supposed to be held in 2021, but postponed due to COVID and the 2022 games were planned to take place in Russia, which were suspended due to the invasion of Ukraine. Miles, international games like this are often an opportunity for international outreach and engagement. They allow the host country to draw a spotlight to themselves and in some cases like the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, they can be a source of international controversy. What do you think this particular event at this time tells us about China's international outreach and relationship with the broader international community?
Miles Yu:
Well, if you ask average American average Brit or average French, I mean what do you think of the World University games and their response would be, “what game?” People don't pay much attention to this, but in China is a huge event because China uses this kind of a world sports events to showcase is global leadership, to tell the world there's a new leadership in the world and that's China. It's a little bit quixotic, right? But China takes this very seriously. Xi Jinping went to Chengdu World Games hosted, which is southwest part of China in the Sichuan province. The whole city became a ghost city because there were severe security measures. Cities were not allowed to go out, you're not allowed to open your window shades. And so there's a severe, this whole city is almost like a Potemkin village of international show, but it's huge.
And interestingly, China really liked this kind of stuff for many reasons. Number one is in 2017, the World University games were held in Taiwan. So China cannot be outdone by Taiwan. They want to show - make a political statement over there. The opening ceremony is very telling because China clearly mixes politics with sports in this opening Olympic like entrance ceremony, which is very, very eye catching. When the Chinese team showed up, it's extravagant and the audience respond with roaring applause and chanting slogans. When the Chinese Taipei team showed up, the audience chanted “unification,” and “reunification with motherland” and is very embarrassing. Now when the Japanese team, US team and the South Korean team entered dead silent, dead silent, there was no audible response from the audience. And this is really, really sort of chilling in a way.
And then some countries were not very happy. India, for example, India sent eight athletes to this game in Chengdu. Three of the eight Indian athletes came from this province, India called the Arunachal Pradesh. China calls it South Tibet. That's the area China and India were disputing as to who owns this area. So the Chinese Government did not issue a regular visa to the three athletes from Arunachal Pradesh. Instead, they given a separate piece of paper, totally detached from the passport trying to make some kind of sovereign statement. The Indian government is absolutely upset about this whole thing. So this kind of a small thing that really damaged China's international reputation and the China issue, a whole bunch of invitation to world leaders to show up at this Chengdu World University games, very few showed up, a couple of deputy prime minister from Central Asia and there is the leader from Indonesia, and that's it. Right about this time, some of the China's newly diplomatic gains even refused to even to be associated with China. One of the very interesting phenomenon was the prime minister of Solomon Islands were supposed to go to China and he realized China is such a rogue country with such a bad reputation. But then he had to go to China at some point, so he just almost certainly faked an injury. He said, I was injured and showed a shirt with clearly fake blood and it showed up on tv, said, no, I'm sorry I couldn't go to China anymore. This is on the eve of the day before he was supposed to depart for China. And you can see this kind of Chinese's reputational damage is of China's own doing.
I mean, last week it was an anniversary of the truce agreement in the Korean peninsula. And Kim Jong Un held a huge hoopla celebrating this. And he invited many countries to go, but only two country sent delegates over there. One is Russia, so the Russian defense Minister Shoigu showed up. Another one is a Party bureau member of Chinese Communist Party, Li Hongzhong. And so the optic is very, very clear. Kim Jong Un sitting over there at reviewing stand and then sandwiched him were Russian defense minister and Chinese party bureau member. And the image is terrible. It shows that China is really, really on the opposite of international goodwill and world peace.
Shane Leary:
On that note, that dovetails nicely into our last topic, which is just this last week the Pew Research Center released a new study. 24 countries across the globe were surveyed on how favorable they viewed China's approach to foreign policy. And just as you're saying, I mean these results were largely unsurprising. A median of two thirds of the country surveyed have an unfavorable opinion of China, whereas only 28% offered positive ratings. The highest unfavorable ratings were in Australia and Japan with 87% of respondents in each country rating China negatively. And their ratings were lowest in North America, Europe, and Asia. But they were more favorable in Latin America and Africa. Of the 24 countries surveyed, the only countries with a majority of respondents answering favorably were Indonesia, South Africa, Kenya, Nigeria, and Mexico. Miles, what do you make of this? How does this compare to China's favorability in the past?
Miles Yu:
Well, you mentioned this, countries were more favorable of China, relatively speaking, right? They're still in the thirties or 40% of dislike of China. And as time goes on, goes along, all this country will have a much bigger unfavorability rating of China. Trust me on that. So this actually is a very, very interesting poll because this is massive, it's not just the United States poll. It's 24 countries. China's reputational problem is worldwide. That's a very important point. China always try to say US is a source of all China's problem. This total nonsense. If you believe that, you will believe the Great Wall of China is in Papua New Guinea. If you look at the poll very carefully, you realize the several wrenching patterns. Number one, there are some countries that have consistently negative view of China, very, very high Japan. For example, at some point a few years ago, 93% of Japanese people have a negative view of China. Germany and France too consistently over the years.
So this is very interesting. So it's not just the recent policy or something, but China's recent policy also is a cause of the huge jump of China's bad reputation in these countries. All due to China's own actions, policies - nobody else's fault. For example, the country was the biggest jump of unfavorable rating of China is Poland. Why? Because China's stance on the war in Ukraine is so notoriously obnoxious to people in Poland and that's why China has become very unfavorable there in that country. They jump by 12% from before the war in Ukraine, Canada in 2019 unfavorable view of China is 45%. It jumped to 67% the next year because China unceremoniously and unjustly arrest two Canadian citizens, two Michaels in China and treat them with death threat. And that's why 67% of people in Canada have an unfavorable view of China right after that. Sweden, the sweetest country in Europe probably jumped from 52% to 70% in 2019. And then unfavorable rating in Sweden jumped to 85% in 2020. That's because China kidnapped and hijacked a Swedish citizen, Mr. Gui Minhai, for publishing a biography of Xi Jinping. This is outrageous. So if you look at also the patterns, of course, virtually all countries have a dramatically jump of China's unfavorable rating from ‘21, ‘22, ‘23 all due to China’s COVID behavior, it’s just atrocious. And they absolutely refuse international inquiry to the origin of COVID and say a lot of silly things. And also last point I don't point out is not all countries are EU or North America or Western in the broader defined sense. If you look at the chart, the numbers of poll results, the most anti-west, most anti-colonial country is India. India is also, oddly enough, a member of both China dominated Shanghai Cooperation organization as well as BRICs countries. Yet 67% of Indians poll dislike China. So this is all very telling and I think confirm a lot of things that we've been saying on this podcast over the past several weeks.
Shane Leary:
I couldn't agree more. Well, Miles, I think that's all the time we have for this week. Thanks for taking the time today and I look forward to speaking with you next week.
Miles Yu:
Thank you. See you next week.
Shane Leary:
Thanks for listening to this week's episode of China Insider. For Chinese language listeners, be sure to check out our monthly Chinese language episodes. And for those who prefer written analysis, subscribe to our weekly newsletter, China Digest, the best place to stay up to date on miles analysis and the latest news on China. As always, you can stay up to date on the China Center's activities at www.hudson.org.