China purges senior military official Miao Hua from top ruling body

BEIJING — China’s top legislature has voted to remove senior military official Miao Hua from the Central Military Commission, its highest-level military command body, according to a statement published Friday by Xinhua, China’s state-run news agency.

Miao, 69, was put under investigation for “serious violations of discipline” in November. The former political ideology chief of the People’s Liberation Army was also suspended from his post.

The Xinhua statement did not contain any other details, but the move marks another stage in President Xi Jinping’s ongoing anti-corruption purge of China’s military, in which over a dozen PLA generals and a handful of defense industry executives have been implicated.

Miao’s photo had been removed from the senior leadership page of the Chinese defense ministry’s website in recent weeks. He was also removed from China’s national legislature for “serious violations of discipline and law,” according to a communique released by the legislature last month.

“The Political Work Department of the Central Military Commission held a military representative conference on March 14 this year and decided to remove Miao Hua from his position as a representative of the 14th National People’s Congress,” the statement said.

Miao was stationed in the coastal province of Fujian when Xi worked there as a local official, according to his official biography. Xi personally elevated Miao to the Central Military Commission.

Another Central Military Commission member and China’s second-ranking general, He Weidong, has not been seen in public since the March 11 closing ceremony of the annual parliamentary sessions in Beijing. Since then, he has not appeared at a series of high-level Politburo and military public engagements.

He is the third-most powerful commander of the People’s Liberation Army and is considered a close associate of Xi, the army’s commander-in-chief.

China’s defense ministry said in March that it was “unaware” of reports he had been detained. His photo remains on the defense ministry’s website.

Two former Chinese defense ministers have been removed from the Communist Party for corruption. One of them, Li Shangfu, was suspected of corruption in military procurement, Reuters has reported.

Last year, the defense ministry denied reports that Defense Minister Dong Jun was being investigated on suspicion of corruption. Dong has continued to appear at public events, attending the Shanghai Cooperation Organization defense ministers’ meeting in Qingdao this week.