Mr. Jacob sent us a link to a Business Insider story by Matthew Loh about how, per Bloomberg, “US intel shows China’s army had missiles filled with water instead of fuel in a corruption scandal that led to Xi’s military purge.”
China’s army fielded missiles filled with water instead of fuel and arrays of silos with improper lids—examples of military corruption that led to a dramatic purge of top officials, Bloomberg reported, citing US intelligence.
Bloomberg, which did not name its sources, reported on Saturday that the intelligence indicated Xi Jinping’s recent ousting of more than a dozen senior commanders in the People’s Liberation Army stemmed from serious issues of graft such as these….
US intelligence sources told Bloomberg that corruption was so severe in China’s Rocket Force and the wider PLA that it would most likely force Xi to recalibrate whether Beijing can take on any major military action soon.
The Rocket Force is China’s main military branch overseeing its nuclear weapons and has been a key focus of Xi’s recent push to rapidly modernize Beijing’s forces.
It’s been especially central to China’s posturing on Taiwan, with Beijing rolling out long-range missiles on its coast to threaten the self-governed island.
Well, if the corruption—in the sense of diverting of funds from intended uses to personal pockets—and consequent slapdash maintenance of missiles and silos are so severe in the Rocket Force and PLA that this would impede China’s ability to “take on any major military action soon,” maybe China’s military is not as ready to clobber China’s prospective victims as they thought it was.
Maybe, as they go to the polls on January 13, the Taiwanese should be at least ten percent less afraid of a near-term invasion by China than they were before release of these details. Let’s have a lot more such corruption.
