Speaker 1: Shi Jimpings fired his top military general, John Yushah amid
Speaker 1: rumors of treason, corruption and scandal.
Speaker 2: Now we have got these sort of dribs and drabs
Speaker 2: of rumors coming out, and the statement seem to first
Speaker 2: of all, implay corruption in a broader sense. Also, you know,
Speaker 2: one of the most wild rumors that's been put out
Speaker 2: is that he was selling or giving nuclear weapons secrets
Speaker 2: to the Americans, which seemed frankly pretty unlikely.
Speaker 1: It's a stunning sacking in an ongoing purge of the
Speaker 1: armed forces. But the crackdown goes even further. Around one
Speaker 1: million Chinese have been disciplined in She's drive against corruption.
Speaker 1: So with the military and crisis and she clearing the decks,
Speaker 1: what does this mean for China's ambition to take Taiwan.
Speaker 1: I'm Nicole Johnston and you're listening to seven AM Today.
Speaker 1: Expert in US Asia Relations at the Harvard Kennedy School
Speaker 1: and co host of the China podcast Face Off, Rana
Speaker 1: Mitter on She's Purge for Power. It's Thursday, January twenty nine. Rana,
Speaker 1: thanks for speaking with me today. Let's start with Jiang Yoshah.
Speaker 1: Who is he and what do we know about why
Speaker 1: he was sacked.
Speaker 2: So Jiang Yoshah was until just a few days ago,
Speaker 2: the first vice chairman of the CMC Central Military Commission
Speaker 2: of China. Probably the best way to understand that is
Speaker 2: that he was the most senior uniformed officer. But just
Speaker 2: a couple of the terms that had been used to
Speaker 2: explain General jog and also one of his colleagues who
Speaker 2: was also fun at the same time. One was endangering
Speaker 2: the Communist Party's ruling foundation, the exerting of vile influence
Speaker 2: on the part, and perhaps the most significant one, undermining
Speaker 2: the Chairman's authority, meaning Chairman Chiten Ping, of course, and
Speaker 2: when they did this, they said that they needed to
Speaker 2: eliminate ideological toxins and promote organizational healing, so some pretty
Speaker 2: fruity language being used there. This is pretty much unprecedented.
Speaker 2: So the Central Military Commission has generally had six people
Speaker 2: on it, and really it's very rare for anyone to
Speaker 2: disappear in an untimely fashion from the Central Military Commission,
Speaker 2: let alone what's happened in the last year or two,
Speaker 2: which is of the six, not one, not two, but
Speaker 2: five have gone basically been purged on the grounds of
Speaker 2: corruption or other charges. Juanui certainly the most spectacular, the
Speaker 2: most senior. Nobody thought he was vulnerably clearly was if
Speaker 2: I were, you know, the sixth one there Jun Jarmin.
Speaker 2: Now I'd been a nervous terms of where that might
Speaker 2: be might be going, but certainly in terms of thinking about,
Speaker 2: you know, the real top ranks of China's military being
Speaker 2: swept away the guests so far as just a guess,
Speaker 2: but let's put it out there. The next five who
Speaker 2: get put into those positions will be even more people
Speaker 2: who basically do what she Jenpin tells them to do.
Speaker 1: There's also a personal element to this. She's fired one
Speaker 1: of his own because they're both considered princelings in the
Speaker 1: Communist Party from similar backgrounds, aren't they.
Speaker 2: That's right, there are long standing family connections between the
Speaker 2: two that go back decades. Yet another reason why people
Speaker 2: you know, probably like me, were under the impression that, well, actually,
Speaker 2: it seems very unlikely that he's going to get kicked
Speaker 2: out because there's such a long history between them. But
Speaker 2: of course, often family or cohort or peer relationships could
Speaker 2: be the most bitter as well as the most close.
Speaker 2: At least in this case, it appears that that family
Speaker 2: closeness hasn't saved them.
Speaker 3: The seriousness in touch corruption in China is clear. President
Speaker 3: Shujin Peng, who is also a General Secretary of the
Speaker 3: Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, says corruption
Speaker 3: threatens the party's very survival and he's vowed to fight
Speaker 3: it at every level, or as he put it, from
Speaker 3: the tigers to the flies.
Speaker 1: Rana, just broadly, could you give us a bit of
Speaker 1: a sense of how widespread this campaign of purging has
Speaker 1: been since she came to power.
Speaker 2: Very broadly speaking, purging has been very widespread under the
Speaker 2: title of anti corruption, that's the phrase that you used
Speaker 2: in the institution called the CDIC, the Central Discipline Inspection Commission,
Speaker 2: as a kind of special and super FBI, with absolutely
Speaker 2: no recourse for people who are arrested under it. They
Speaker 2: can hold you in communicado for I think these six months,
Speaker 2: probably longer than that if they really want to. And
Speaker 2: it's been used to strike terror into the heart of
Speaker 2: corrupt officials in particular. But actually the taking down of
Speaker 2: civilian officials has been going on now for well over
Speaker 2: a decade. And because we think about, you know, the
Speaker 2: ones who are perhaps at the very top elite level,
Speaker 2: those the ones who catch headlines in the western world.
Speaker 2: But actually you can see the way down at the
Speaker 2: provincial level and elsewhere. There's been a tremendous amount of
Speaker 2: anti corruption activity going on.
Speaker 1: As you said, Shi Jimping has said that this is
Speaker 1: all about weeding out that corruption, or the ross, as
Speaker 1: he calls it. But is this really more about consolidating
Speaker 1: total control for him over the armed forces.
Speaker 2: I think it is almost certainly about that, and it
Speaker 2: has a rather ironic implication the short and the long term,
Speaker 2: because in the short term it might actually make the
Speaker 2: prospect of a war between China and said the United
Speaker 2: States actually less likely in the near future. Why because
Speaker 2: if Jiinping thinks that this is the time to really
Speaker 2: concentrate inwards, to be purging the armed forces at the
Speaker 2: senior level and beyond to remake them in a different image,
Speaker 2: maybe his own image, that's not the best moment at which,
Speaker 2: on the grounds of morale, preparation and so forth, to
Speaker 2: launch any kind of really major military campaign. I think
Speaker 2: there's unlikely to be any kind of massive comportation this
Speaker 2: year anyway, because both the United States and China have
Speaker 2: a best interest in the April summer between Si Jinping
Speaker 2: and Donald Trump, going well, But that doesn't say much
Speaker 2: about where things might be in three five years time,
Speaker 2: when presumably the purges will have taken effect, where the
Speaker 2: new cadre of Chinese military leaders will be even more
Speaker 2: in Cheese image than they were for and then the
Speaker 2: idea that maybe they will be much more beholden to
Speaker 2: him rather than the party structures might be more significant.
Speaker 1: Coming up. What she's military shakedown means for Taiwan, Rana,
Speaker 1: Let's talk firepower. I saw some of it myself at
Speaker 1: the jew High Air Show in southern China about.
Speaker 3: A year ago.
Speaker 2: To hang out at the coolest places, Nicole, What can
Speaker 2: I said?
Speaker 1: I know, so, as we know, they're expanding shipbuilding, missiles,
Speaker 1: nuclear drones. Could you take us through some of that firepower?
Speaker 1: What have they got?
Speaker 2: Yeah? For instance, the development in the last couple of
Speaker 2: years or so of greater capacity to do amphibious attacks,
Speaker 2: you know, land and sea combined using new kinds of
Speaker 2: rolling barges and other equipment of that sort, might or
Speaker 2: might not indicate that an assault on Taiwan was being
Speaker 2: prepared for. Drone technology is something that China is really
Speaker 2: continuing to perfect and one of the testing grounds they
Speaker 2: have is essentially giving the technology, not the drones themselves,
Speaker 2: so to be clear about that, but some of the
Speaker 2: technology that can shape it to the Russians for their
Speaker 2: war in Ukraine, but also a space force. And Donald
Speaker 2: Trump in fact to established the space force in his
Speaker 2: first term on the US side, but China's had one
Speaker 2: for quite some time unclear forces. And again we see
Speaker 2: the new building of missile silos up in Gansu Province
Speaker 2: in the northwest of China. And cyber cyber warfare is
Speaker 2: you know, the warfare of the mid twenty first century.
Speaker 1: All of this was on display at the massive military
Speaker 1: parade that we had in Beijing last year. Putin Kim
Speaker 1: Jong un was there. What was the message that she
Speaker 1: was trying to center the world there.
Speaker 2: One of the things that was very notable about the
Speaker 2: military parade was quite how much it concentrated on hardware.
Speaker 2: I mean huge numbers of missiles, tanks, other pieces of
Speaker 2: equipment being paraded through Gentleman Square. But the vast majority
Speaker 2: of what we saw was very much about China today
Speaker 2: being a fierce nationalistic country that no longer is willing
Speaker 2: to even contemplate going back to the days of World
Speaker 2: War two and around then, when China was a victim
Speaker 2: in the world, instead reconstituting itself as one of the hegemon's,
Speaker 2: one of the leaders of the world, and that military
Speaker 2: equipment that we saw being paraded through was in some
Speaker 2: senses a symbolic but very very clear indication of how
Speaker 2: the capacity to use force is now something that China
Speaker 2: has developed as part of its own sense of its
Speaker 2: own identity and has no intention I suspect of ever
Speaker 2: letting go again.
Speaker 4: Humanity again has to choose between peace and war, theirlog
Speaker 4: and confrontationing win win corporation and zero sum game.
Speaker 1: The world's been waiting and watching to see if and
Speaker 1: when China will take Taiwan by force, even though China,
Speaker 1: for its part, continues to insist that what it wants
Speaker 1: is peaceful reunification. But how does this purge actually affect
Speaker 1: China's readiness for war?
Speaker 2: I think that in the unlikely event of a full
Speaker 2: scale invasion of Taiwan, I do think it's relatively unlikely
Speaker 2: because it would be extraordinarily difficult maneuver to bring off.
Speaker 2: But assuming that the Chiping and the military leadership came
Speaker 2: together and actually wanted to do it. The military purges
Speaker 2: make it much less likely in the short term if
Speaker 2: you're going to undertake an operation that demands that level
Speaker 2: of skill and ability to pull off a huge end.
Speaker 2: Makes D Day look fairly amateur, I would say, in
Speaker 2: some ways, because the distance is involved, then you want
Speaker 2: to have your armed forces on their best possible form.
Speaker 2: Right in the middle of reeling from the you know,
Speaker 2: continuing bang bang bang are the loss of these top
Speaker 2: figures and in the many mid level figures as well,
Speaker 2: I would say that this does not seem the best
Speaker 2: state of the armed forces that would be in a
Speaker 2: position to undertake an action like the invasion of Taiwan.
Speaker 2: Doesn't mean all that it would never never happen, but
Speaker 2: I think that recent events, including the purchase, making the
Speaker 2: short term much less likely.
Speaker 1: But at the same time, we have had these military
Speaker 1: drills escalating around Taiwan over the last couple of years.
Speaker 2: Yes, we have, and I often think that it's when
Speaker 2: China really pushes hard and makes these huge gestures that
Speaker 2: actually it's just a sign saying we haven't forgotten about you.
Speaker 2: We know we're still there, but there's an extent to
Speaker 2: which there's a performance element, a pretty frightening performance element
Speaker 2: to these continuous military exercises. And certainly people on Taiwan,
Speaker 2: where I was just a few weeks ago, perhaps some
Speaker 2: of got used to it. Not to say that this
Speaker 2: isn't dangerous. I mean again, nobody, certainly including me, can
Speaker 2: say that it's impossible that a military assault on Taiwan,
Speaker 2: or a naval blockade or quarantine or other kind of
Speaker 2: gray zone tactic might not be used on Taiwan, but
Speaker 2: it's unlikely to have them.
Speaker 1: So Rana, what does this spectacular military downfall at the
Speaker 1: very top tell us about how she is running the
Speaker 1: armed forces and running the rest of China?
Speaker 2: I think it's fair to say that he's now running
Speaker 2: the armed forces as he has been running the rest
Speaker 2: of China, which is worth an increasing sense of quite
Speaker 2: personalistic dominance. Now it's important to make distinctions. Vladimir Putin
Speaker 2: is probably the best example of someone who has reconstituted
Speaker 2: the entire government around him. She hasn't either tried nor
Speaker 2: I think is easy able to do that, because the
Speaker 2: party's structures and other people within it still actually remain
Speaker 2: very very powerful in many senses, but the shift over
Speaker 2: the last fifteen years or so has been noticeable. Back
Speaker 2: in the twenty twenty twenty tens, China took pride in
Speaker 2: the fact that it had what it called a collective leadership.
Speaker 2: She didn't think did away with all of that when
Speaker 2: he came to power in twenty twelve. Having got the position,
Speaker 2: he turned on sixpence very very quickly and started to
Speaker 2: really purge power centers that might push back against him.
Speaker 2: That was one of their very first pushes against the
Speaker 2: PLA start to happen. So I think we've already seen
Speaker 2: the blueprint really over the last fifteen years that as
Speaker 2: China is a more personalistic one, it's more nationalistic. It's
Speaker 2: one that as Donald Trump himself has observedble that once
Speaker 2: quite admiringly, has created a sort of strong man type
Speaker 2: of vision of what government is that actually has proved
Speaker 2: increasingly attractive to leaders elsewhere who seek to emulate that
Speaker 2: kind of action.
Speaker 1: Rana, thanks for joining me today.
Speaker 2: Thanks ver much, Nicole, it's been a pleasure.
Speaker 1: Also in the news, David Little Proud looks said to
Speaker 1: face a challenge for the Nationals leadership. On Monday. Rogue
Speaker 1: backbencher Colin Boyce says he will move a spill motion
Speaker 1: after Little Proud's decision to remove the nets from the
Speaker 1: coalition last week. Boyce claims the split political suicide for
Speaker 1: the National Party. Little Proud fended off a leadership challenge
Speaker 1: from Matt Canavan, who has far more support than Voice
Speaker 1: after the last election, and their affairs of the Reserve
Speaker 1: Bank could be primed for an interest rate hike after
Speaker 1: a higher than expected rise in inflation, a big jump
Speaker 1: in prices for tourists travel, and the end of the
Speaker 1: electricity subsidy saw annual inflation rise to three point eight percent.
Speaker 1: All four major banks are now tipping a rate rise
Speaker 1: next week. I'm Nicole Johnston. It's a seven am. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening.