The main goal of the meeting was to legitimize Xi Jinping’s purge of Gen. Zhang Youxia, but this met with resistance, analysts said.
The Standing Committee of the Chinese Communist Party’s rubber-stamp legislature has held a special session to expel three senior military-industrial officials amid the ongoing military purge.
Analysts told The Epoch Times that although the removal of the three technocrats exposes the Chinese regime’s systemic corruption, these men were not the primary targets of the special meeting, as infighting among the top echelons of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) persists.
The three technocrats who were removed from the National People’s Congress (NPC) on Feb. 4 include Zhou Xinmin, former chairman of Aviation Industry Corp. of China; Luo Qi, former chief engineer of China National Nuclear Corp. and a nuclear power expert; and Liu Cangli, former president of the China Academy of Engineering Physics, member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and a nuclear weapons expert.
All three men had been absent from important events or had left their positions for unspecified reasons for months before the official announcement at the Standing Committee’s special meeting.
The announcement came amid the CCP’s political turmoil caused by the recent removal of top generals Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli.
The Chinese regime’s official media have been unusually quiet about the incident after the PLA Daily, the official mouthpiece of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), published an editorial on Jan. 25 criticizing Zhang and Liu Zhenli for “seriously violating and undermining the system of responsibility under the Chairman of the Central Military Commission, and endangering the foundation of the CCP’s rule.”
Meanwhile, various departments of the Central Military Commission or major military commands have been silent about CCP leader Xi Jinping’s purge of the two top generals, unlike previous incidents in which they expressed support almost immediately through official statements. The unusual silence indicates that the case is not totally settled and that dissent is growing within the military, according to analysts who recently spoke with The Epoch Times.
This special session of the NPC was held outside its regular schedule, which suggests that it was convened to address specific and important matters, Shen Ming-shih, a research fellow at the Division of National Security Research at Taiwan’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research, told The Epoch Times.
By Alex Wu
