CSIS

On December 29, Xi Jinping removed nine top military officials in what is being called a “purge,” including officials from the Strategic Rocket Forces that oversee China’s nuclear-armed missiles. Subsequent reporting by Bloomberg indicated the purge was due to “widespread corruption” that has undermined “efforts to modernize the armed forces and raised questions about China’s ability to fight a war,” according to U.S. intelligence. Specifically, Chinese missiles were allegedly filled with water, rather fuel, including many of the missiles in the silo fields recently discovered by open-source intelligence.

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