A top Chinese official in Beijing’s secretive Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Rocket Force has been placed under investigation for corruption, Chinese state media said, deepening a crackdown on alleged graft in the military.
PLA Rocket Force Chief of Staff Sun Jinming (孫金明) was kicked out of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and is under investigation for “grave violations of party discipline and laws,” Xinhua said on Thursday, using a common euphemism for graft.
The news came in a communique issued to mark the end of the CCP’s Third Plenum, which began on Monday and ended on Thursday.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Beijing also confirmed that former PLA Rocket Force commander Li Yuchao (李玉超) had been expelled from the party and stood accused of “grave violations of discipline.”
Thursday’s readout marked the first time that the investigation into Sun, appointed chief of staff of the Rocket Force in 2022, had been made public.
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) has launched an aggressive, wide-ranging anti-graft campaign since coming to power.
In the past year, the campaign has turned its attention to the secretive Rocket Force, the army unit that oversees Beijing’s nuclear arsenal.
Its head, Li, was replaced in July last year.
Former Chinese minister of national defense Li Shangfu (李尚福) was ousted last year after only seven months as defense minister following a lengthy absence from public view.
He was later expelled from the CCP for causing “great damage to [its] cause” through offenses including suspected bribery.
Other disgraced generals include Wei Fenghe (魏鳳和), who once headed the Rocket Force and who later became China’s defence minister from 2018 to last year.
Chinese state broadcaster China Central Television last month said that Wei had been expelled from the party and passed on to prosecutors over alleged corruption.
The Rocket Force is a relatively new unit of the Chinese military.
Its creation was announced after a major reorganization of China’s military structure.
It oversees China’s arsenal of strategic missiles, both conventional and nuclear, and can both deter and strike, according to the Chinese government.
DENIAL: Pyongyang said a South Korean drone filmed unspecified areas in a North Korean border town, but Seoul said it did not operate drones on the dates it cited North Korea’s military accused South Korea of flying drones across the border between the nations this week, yesterday warning that the South would face consequences for its “unpardonable hysteria.” Seoul quickly denied the accusation, but the development is likely to further dim prospects for its efforts to restore ties with Pyongyang. North Korean forces used special electronic warfare assets on Sunday to bring down a South Korean drone flying over North Korea’s border town. The drone was equipped with two cameras that filmed unspecified areas, the General Staff of the North Korean People’s Army said in a statement. South Korea infiltrated another drone
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
Indonesia and Malaysia have become the first countries to block Grok, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, after authorities said it was being misused to generate sexually explicit and nonconsensual images. The moves reflect growing global concern over generative AI tools that can produce realistic images, sound and text, while existing safeguards fail to prevent their abuse. The Grok chatbot, which is accessed through Musk’s social media platform X, has been criticized for generating manipulated images, including depictions of women in bikinis or sexually explicit poses, as well as images involving children. Regulators in the two Southeast Asian
ICE DISPUTE: The Trump administration has sought to paint Good as a ‘domestic terrorist,’ insisting that the agent who fatally shot her was acting in self-defense Thousands of demonstrators chanting the name of the woman killed by a US federal agent in Minneapolis, Minnesota, took to the city’s streets on Saturday, amid widespread anger at use of force in the immigration crackdown of US President Donald Trump. Organizers said more than 1,000 events were planned across the US under the slogan “ICE, Out for Good” — referring to the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is drawing growing opposition over its execution of Trump’s effort at mass deportations. The slogan is also a reference to Renee Good, the 37-year-old mother shot dead on Wednesday in her
RSS