By Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Corruption in China's military may have disrupted its progress towards its 2027 military modernization goals, the Pentagon said in its annual report on Beijing's military that was released on Wednesday.
Since last year, China's military has undergone a sweeping anti-corruption purge and last month the defense ministry said a top-ranking military official had been suspended and was under investigation for "serious violations of discipline."
The wide-ranging Pentagon report said that between July and December 2023, at least 15 high-ranking Chinese military officers and defense industry executives were removed from their posts.
"In 2023, the PLA experienced a new wave of corruption-related investigations and removals of senior leaders which may have disrupted its progress toward stated 2027 modernization goals," the report said, using an acronym for the People's Liberation Army (PLA).
U.S. officials, including the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, have said that Chinese President Xi Jinping had ordered his military to be ready to conduct an invasion of Taiwan by 2027.
China's official 2027 modernization goals include accelerating the integration of intelligence, mechanization and other tools while boosting the speed of modernization in military theories, personnel, weapons and equipment, the Pentagon said.
The removal of the 15 senior officials was likely the "tip of the iceberg," Ely Ratner, U.S. Assistant Secretary of Defense for Indo-Pacific Security Affairs, told a Washington think tank after the report's release. China's leadership would not be taking such extreme anticorruption measures unless they felt the PLA's operational effectiveness was being impacted, he said.
"I don't think this is just ... some guys are taking some money and putting it in their pocket, or maybe their banquets, they're buying too expensive whiskey," Ratner said at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The crackdown would likely create a period of risk aversion and "paralysis" through lower ranks, he added.
A senior U.S. defense official told reporters that the anti-corruption hunt also can slow down military projects, including in China's defense industry.
"Once they uncover corruption in one place or involving one senior official, there's sort of a bit of a spiraling effect (which) inevitably seems to draw in additional officials," the official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said.
The report pointed to several removals from China's military rocket force, known as the People's Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF), an elite arm of the PLA that oversees its most advanced conventional and nuclear missiles.
"The impact on PRC (People's Republic of China) leaders' confidence in the PLA after discovering corruption on this scale is probably elevated by the PLARF's uniquely important nuclear mission," it added.
In November, China said Admiral Miao Hua, who served on the Central Military Commission, the country's highest-level military command body, was under investigation for "serious violations of discipline." Miao had been the military's leading political officer on the six-person commission, which is headed by Xi.
Beijing has said media reports that Defense Minister Dong Jun, who ranks below Miao, had been sidelined by an investigation were "sheer fabrication."
"The PLA made uneven progress toward its 2027 capability milestone for modernization, which, if realized, could make the PLA a more credible military tool for the CCP's Taiwan unification efforts," a document accompanying the Pentagon report said, using an acronym for the Chinese Communist Party.
A poll by Taiwan's top military think tank published in October said that most Taiwanese believe China is unlikely to invade in the coming five years but do see Beijing as a serious threat to the democratic island.
Over the past five years or so, China's military has significantly ramped up its activities around Taiwan, which Beijing views as its own territory, over the strong objections of the government in Taipei, and has never renounced the use of force to bring the island under its control.
Ratner said despite efforts to modernize, it was not clear the PLA was getting closer to its Taiwan-related goals given U.S. moves to keep pace and build deterrence in the Indo-Pacific.
"They may be racing forward with military modernization, but finding themselves just as distant, if not more distant, from solving some of the operational problems they're trying to solve," he said.
Responding to the report on Thursday, Taiwan Defense Minister Wellington Koo said the military will continue to adjust its plans, strengthening itself so China will not engage in a full-scale invasion.
"We will use our strength to deter possible reckless actions in the Taiwan Strait," he told reporters in Taipei.
(Reporting by Idrees Ali, Phil Stewart and Michael Martina; Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard in Taipei; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Michael Perry)
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