Beijing: In an interesting development, General Zhao Zongqi, China’s former western theatre command chief, who led the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) during the 2020 Galwan clash with India, has been stripped of his Communist Party membership.
Two other senior military commanders have been removed from the country’s supreme military command body, as reported by The Tribune.
The standing committee of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), stripped Gen Zhao of his membership, it was reported.
The CPPCC meeting approved the decision to remove Zhao from his positions as a member of the standing committee of the CPPCC national committee and vice chairman of the Committee on Ethnic and Religious Affairs, and to revoke his membership of the CPPCC, Reuters, cited China’s state-run Xinhua news agency as reporting.
The PLA’s Western Theatre Command was led by Gen Zhao from 2016 to 2020. He was appointed its first commander when the theatre was created following PLA reforms in 2016, overseeing the entire contested India-China border along the Line of Actual Control (LAC).
He held the key command during major geopolitical flashpoints, including the 2017 Doklam standoff in southeastern Sikkim and the 2020 China-India border skirmishes in eastern Ladakh that led to the deaths of 20 Indian soldiers and an unspecified number of PLA personnel.
In late 2020, he had officially handed over command to General Zhang Xudong, after reaching the standard retirement age.
China, on Friday, also removed two senior military officers from its supreme military command body, the state Central Military Commission (CMC), following investigations over suspected serious violations of discipline and law, Reuters reported.
Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli were removed from the seven-member commission led by President Xi Jinping.
While Zhang was the second-in-command under Xi as vice chairman of the CMC and a member of China’s elite Politburo, Liu was a CMC member and chief of staff of the CMC’s joint staff department.
Xi had urged senior leaders of the communist party to deepen the fight against corruption in the military last month. The years-long campaign has seen scores of senior officials and top generals investigated, removed and purged.
China has parallel Communist Party and state CMC structures, but they function as a single institution.
Friday’s announcement by the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress concerns Zhang and Liu’s positions in the state CMC. This means they have been stripped of their posts in the state-run CMC, but not from the military commission of the ruling Communist Party of China.