Recently, the long-standing opaque field of “civil-military fusion” in the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been hit by a double blow from US sanctions and internal cleansing within the CCP.
In the recent anti-corruption campaign in CCP’s military industry, two high-ranking officials overseeing “civil-military fusion” are suspected to be in trouble.
The plenary session of CCP’s Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) concluded on January 8th, with Minister of Industry and Information Technology Jin Zhuanglong, who comes from the aerospace system, absent from this meeting. Jin was the former Executive Deputy Director of the Office of the Central Military-Civil Fusion Development Commission and served as the Director of the Shanghai Aerospace Bureau, Vice General Manager of China Aerospace Technology Corporation, and Chairman of Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China. He was appointed as the Executive Deputy Director of the Central Military-Civil Fusion Office in August 2017 and later became the Secretary of the Party Committee of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in July 2022, and Minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in September of the same year.
Additionally, current Executive Deputy Director of the Central Military-Civil Fusion Office, Lei Fanpei, and Director of the State Administration for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense, Zhang Kejian, both were absent from the major leadership conference at the end of October last year and the Central Economic Work Conference in December. Zhang Kejian was dismissed from his position in December last year.
Lei Fanpei is part of the “military-industrial clique” that has been favored by Xi Jinping in recent years. He previously served as Chairman of China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, Chairman of Asia-Pacific Satellite Holdings, General Commander of New Generation Carrier Rocket Project, and Chairman of China Shipbuilding Group. The exact timing of Lei Fanpei’s current position was not publicly disclosed, but on August 20, 2022, Lei Fanpei’s profile and photo were quietly removed from the China Shipbuilding Group’s official website.
Since 2023, the ongoing crackdown on corruption arising from the CCP Rocket Army case and the investigation into equipment system corruption in the military has led to the downfall of dozens of senior military officers and executives in the military industry, although many cases have not been publicly announced.
Chen Mingshi, Director of the Institute of National Security at the Taiwan Institute for National Defense and Security Research, told Epoch Times that in the past, the CCP had the Defense Science and Technology Commission, spanning across the State Council and the military. Later, the Defense Science and Technology Commission was transformed into the State Administration for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense under the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Although it is only a bureau-level unit, it is responsible for the research and development of CCP’s military equipment, exports, technology introduction, and more. Given that the personnel in charge are from military-industrial enterprises, this signifies that the military-industrial sector is involved in corruption issues in terms of military equipment research and development and fund utilization.
Chen Mingshi stated that among all the military-industrial sectors of the CCP, those closely related to private industries are more prone to corruption.
“The CCP’s civil-military fusion easily encounters problems. For example, in the research and development of civilian industries, whether the results belong to private companies or the military? Or if the military provides resources to private companies, such as patented products for collaborative production, how is the profit distributed? With substantial interests at stake, these civil-military fusion industries easily generate corrupt practices or instances of private gains.”