When Russia launched its illegal war of territorial aggression against Ukraine in 2022, many Russian units were shocked by how badly supplied and equipped they were, with Putin cronies supplying expired food and lots of spare parts and equipment seemingly stolen or sold off. Dictatorships lack checks and balances, and without them, corruption tends to become endemic.
Now news has come to light that the same thing appear to have happened in China.
US intelligence indicates that President Xi Jinping’s sweeping military purge came after it emerged that widespread corruption undermined his efforts to modernize the armed forces and raised questions about China’s ability to fight a war, according to people familiar with the assessments.
The corruption inside China’s Rocket Force and throughout the nation’s defense industrial base is so extensive that US officials now believe Xi is less likely to contemplate major military action in the coming years than would otherwise have been the case, according to the people, who asked not to be named discussing intelligence.
The US assessments cited several examples of the impact of graft, including missiles filled with water instead of fuel and vast fields of missile silos in western China with lids that don’t function in a way that would allow the missiles to launch effectively, one of the people said.
I’ve got to say, trying to get away with graft in your nation’s nuclear forces is a pretty bold move. On the other hand, if China ever tried to use them, there’s such a high chance all military leadership would be incinerated by America’s much better equipped and maintained nuclear forces, so maybe they figured they’d never be held to account.
The US assesses that corruption within the People’s Liberation Army has led to an erosion of confidence in its overall capabilities, particularly when it comes to the Rocket Force, and also set back some of Xi’s top modernization priorities, the people said. The graft probe has ensnared more than a dozen senior defense officials over the past six months, in what may be China’s largest crackdown on the country’s military in modern history.
One wonders what other areas of China’s military capabilities have been degraded thanks to corner-cutting and corruption. Looking at the rest of China: Maybe all of it?
All this leads me to a pretty on-point Habitual Linecrosser:
I’ve wrote about how the Pakistani ISI were backing the Taliban for over a decade, for all the good it did…
Tags: Afghanistan, China, Communism, Foreign Policy, Habitual Linecrosser, Jihad, Military, nuclear weapons, Pakistan, Pakistani ISI, Taliban, video
I’ve got to say, trying to get away with graft in your nation’s nuclear forces is a pretty bold move.
I disagree. That’s the best place to do it. Because they’re the least likely to ever be used. And if they are used, you’re so f’ed that “corruption investigation” is very low on your priority list.
And seriously, how hard is it to pay off any inspectors who might actually come in and check to confirm that the rockets have fuel, not water?
For that matter, think how much cheaper the maintenance is when there’s no nasty rocket fuel there eating things up.
Doesn’t really surprise me. When you look at all of the goods that are sent over here without stringent Western review and quality specifications, there is just so much junk. I believe that corner cutting is endemic in the Middle Kingdom and must be found in the Armed Forces. Additionally main entrance is a hard skill to practice.
Now, we have to ask our selves if Taiwan is actually serious about their own defense.
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Pakistan’s ISI backing the Taliban was, I thought, a known thing 20 years ago. I’d swear I remember it being talked about in the aftermath of 9-11. I want to say Pakistan was funding them to offset Bin Laden, but maybe I remember it wrong.
I’d be more comfortable with this if the narrative wasn’t also self-serving to US Intelligence that wants to avoid a major military action with China in the next few years. Especially when US Intelligence has made many mistakes in the past two decades.
Still, corruption in the Chinese military lines up with other economic problems within the country.
I think it was well known thst they had backed them in the past. Less clear was whether they were still backing them abd if so by how much abd how closely connected they were.
Xi Jinping has a long history of using dramatic corruption allegations to eliminate competitors and refractory subordinates. You can never confirm the truthfulness of those allegations from the outside, but their salaciousness does suggest that Xi is a devoted student of the ancient Roman methods of political disparagement.
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I’ve been saying for a while, as bad as things have gotten with our military under DEI, CRT, and the soft socialism of GOPe and DEM, why would we think China and NorK would be in BETTER shape after 3/4 of a century of that kind of incompetence?
Which isn’t’ to excuse our idiocies, it is going to get a lot of people killed.
It’s hard enough to keep corruption down in Western forces, which generally have a lot more accountability.
Corruption in non-Western forces (yes I count the Russians in there, they’ve been trying to Westernize since at least Peter the Great but not yet) would be much harder to minimize.
Our problem is the people moving back and forth between industry making the things and the agencies supposedly checking them.
M.,
When the Wall came down, I had a chance to visit my east German counterparts at their GDR airbase. They told me that they regularly lied to higher HQ about their aircraft availability rate which was supposed to be 90%. It seldom exceeded 50% but they always reported at least 90 or bad things happened.
On the other hand, they said they dedicated an entire wing to shooting down just one of our AWACS, so the ines that could fly were coming en masse to try to overwhelm us.
“US intelligence indicates…” *rolls eyes*
Don’t forget, Sun Tzu wrote about feigning weakness.
I could totally believe there’s graft, corruption, and mysteriously missing rocket fuel. On the other hand….it does seem wise not to get cocky.
There’s no way of telling what the actual reality of things are inside China. I’m of the opinion that not even the Chinese authorities know, for sure. That’s the problem with the sort of authoritarian government they like to operate; information flow upwards is always going to be distorted, particularly once you start in with the “kill the messenger/murder the corrupt” thing that Xi is apparently so fond of.
The incentives they’re setting with the “social credit” BS is another center of corruption and misinformation flow that will make any decision made at the top almost certainly wrong. Plus that, all the people pushed out of the system for “non-compliance” now have no interest whatsoever in supporting said system, soooo…. You’re really building up a wellspring of discontent and rebellion that you will have one hell of a time countering when the time comes.
China has this cultural issue with authoritarianism. The higher echelons love it; the lower-down sort of folks just deal with it, and feed the lies in at the base. If you’ve ever studied Chinese history, it’s a never-ending succession of similar stories about Imperial over-reach within China, followed by economic collapse when the brilliant people at the center of things prove that they’re not up to the task of playing God with the economy and governance, which then leads to truly epic revolts and massive non-compliance with the central authorities and their usual foolishness. The same thing will happen with modern China, the only question is “When?”.
The control-freaks of the world are constantly trying to impose their will on the universe. The universe is constantly making them look stupid, with the effective result that they create nothing but disaster.
Witness the current situation here in the US; you’ve had all these do-good types at work since the end of WWII. What do we have to show for it? Wrecked economy, a national debt of ridiculous size, and an ongoing series of idiotic decisions and social policies that will end with disaster, likely within the span of this election year. And, we did it all by listening to these morons, who’ve never, ever managed to do anything right, ever. Aside from making themselves wealthy off the backs of the average American.