HONG KONG—Decades of spending increases have helped China build one of the world’s most substantial militaries, stirring fears that it could seize Taiwan or provoke a clash over territorial disputes with neighbors such as Japan or the Philippines.
But the chief victim of the buildup of China’s military so far has been its own elite, as Chinese leader Xi Jinping has purged a swath of top generals accused of corruption and disloyalty.
The latest top brass to be put under investigation, Generals Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, rose and fell from power during a decadeslong surge in military spending that has provided a fountain of opportunities for graft in a defense establishment that never extinguished its problems with corruption.
“Money spent very quickly on the military corrupts very quickly,” said Dennis Wilder, a senior fellow at Georgetown University and former U.S. intelligence officer.
Both generals also face allegations of factionalization and defiance of Xi’s authority—the most serious charges against them, according to analysts, who say the Chinese leader’s corruption fight is ultimately part of his effort to ensure the complete loyalty of those around him.
Between 2015 and 2024, China’s official military spending grew by close to 60%, according to an analysis by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. China has long had the second-largest military budget behind the U.S., and researchers estimate its true size is as much as 30% higher than what is officially reported.
China’s military has been unveiling a series of new and expensive items, such as its third aircraft carrier, which was commissioned late last year. Its navy is now larger than that of the U.S. by ship count. Satellite images indicate China is researching a nuclear propulsion system for a large warship, analysts say, that would give its aircraft carriers a range and endurance comparable to America’s.
Some of the most prominent aspects of China’s recent military expansion have also seen some of the most notable allegations of corruption.
That includes the addition of some 350 silos for ballistic missiles in remote parts of northern China, “the most significant recent development in China’s nuclear arsenal,” according to a report led by Hans Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists.
The lids of at least some of those silos had problems, likely forcing the Chinese military to repair them, the Pentagon said in its 2024 report on China’s military power.
Recent investigations have led to the removal of several commanders of the rocket force, the Chinese military branch responsible for the silos. Also targeted was Li Shangfu, a defense minister who had been head of the Equipment Development Department under the Central Military Commission, giving him a role in overseeing that expansion.
The “wholesale dismissal” of the rocket force’s senior leadership “may be connected to fraud cases involving the construction of underground silos for ballistic missiles during a period of rapid expansion,” the Pentagon said in the 2024 report.
Chinese leaders likely took the problem more seriously because of the force’s “uniquely important nuclear mission,” the report added.
Fraudulent procurement practices could also have been a factor in the dockside-sinking of a prototype of a new Chinese submarine, the Pentagon said last year.
The Chinese military has a long history of corruption, including widespread cases of buying and selling ranks and extensive side businesses controlled by military personnel. Xi began his purge of the military leadership soon after coming to power in 2012, driving out one former member of the top-level Central Military Commission in 2014 for corruption offenses including accepting bribes and improperly assisting in promotions, and another in 2015 for similar offenses.
“In hindsight, we can say that the metaphorical writing was already on the wall, and that more cases of skimming off the top, seeking favors for preferred protégés and businesses, would come up when reforms began and way too much money began being pumped into modernization,” said Anushka Saxena, a research analyst with the Takshashila Institution, an Indian think tank.
While those initial purges were of military brass who previously held top positions under Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, the latest are of active-duty generals who reached the apex of China’s military leadership under Xi himself.
Zhang was previously seen as one of Xi’s most trusted allies in the military, and his father fought alongside Xi’s father during the Chinese civil war.
Along with public accusations that Zhang and Liu undermined Xi’s authority and harmed military readiness, high-level military officials have been told that Zhang accepted bribes for the promotion of Li to defense minister and leaked information about the country’s nuclear program to the U.S., The Wall Street Journal has reported.
Zhang and Liu couldn’t be reached for comment and haven’t spoken publicly about the charges against them.
Being accused of crossing Xi could be the biggest nail in their political coffins. “The key article is about not remaining loyal to the chairman responsibility system, which is what Xi Jinping instituted when he declared himself commander in chief of the armed forces,” said Wilder, the Georgetown fellow.
Write to Austin Ramzy at austin.ramzy@wsj.com