A Nuclear Shift
PLA Rocket Force leadership changes raise security concerns

FORUM Staff
During the past decade, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has doubled its combat missile brigades within the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force (PLARF), unveiling missiles capable of launching conventional and nuclear warheads and touting technology to evade missile defense.
“The technologies and deployment patterns of these weapons are important indications of the direction of China’s force posture,” according to a report titled “People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force Order of Battle 2023,” published by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey in California. “They not only indicate China’s military capabilities, but also its fears and its conceptions about how future wars in the region will be conducted.”
Another sign of shifting Chinese strategy — on the nuclear front at least — is the change in rocket force leadership revealed in July 2023, when CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping abruptly replaced two of the PLARF’s most senior officials, analysts said. Some characterized it as Beijing’s biggest military leadership shake-up in years.
The reshuffle might be two-pronged. First, it suggests a potential shift by Xi toward a nuclear triad that enables nuclear missile launches from air, land or sea, experts said. Second, it signifies Xi’s attempts to rid his ranks of alleged corruption and surround himself with fierce loyalists who will do what the party says without question. This includes a lineup of leaders willing to use military force to annex self-governing Taiwan if Xi so orders.
“The latest purge is significant [as] China is undertaking one of the most profound changes in nuclear strategy in decades,” Lyle Morris, a foreign policy and national security fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute, told the BBC. “Xi has consolidated control of the PLA in unprecedented ways, but that doesn’t mean it’s complete. Xi is still worried about corruption in the ranks and has signaled that absolute loyalty to the [party] has not yet been achieved.”

Dissension in the ranks?
Xi serves as chairman of the CCP’s Central Military Commission (CMC) and is therefore commander in chief of all PLA branches. He demands absolute loyalty and has been cracking down on supposed corruption throughout the military since coming to power in 2012. As a result, Xi has previously purged other senior leaders, including Fang Fenghui, former PLA chief of the joint staff. Fang was sentenced in 2019 to life in prison on corruption charges, The Washington Post newspaper reported.
The two ousted rocket force leaders also are reportedly being investigated by the PLA’s anti-corruption unit for allegedly leaking military secrets. Neither Gen. Li Yuchao, the former rocket force leader, nor his deputy and PLARF political commissar, Gen. Liu Guangbin, had been seen for weeks prior to their removal, and Chinese state media offered no explanation of their whereabouts or why they were replaced.
“The lack of transparency, specifically forthright explanations by government spokespersons, harms China’s credibility on multiple levels and leaves analysts speculating about not only the rationale for these personnel shifts but the scope and extent of what is happening,” Drew Thompson, a visiting senior research fellow at the National University of Singapore’s Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, wrote in an analysis of implications of the PLARF leadership changes. “My instinct tells me this is not an anti-corruption case but a more politicized effort to replace active and retired senior officials that Xi believes present a political risk to the party. These officials are potentially judged to be disloyal, or less than absolutely loyal, to Xi and the party.”
Replacing Li as the PLARF’s new head is Wang Houbin, former deputy commander of the PLA Navy (PLAN). Replacing Liu as the new political commissar is Xu Xisheng. Their ascension to the PLARF marks a departure from elevating personnel already serving in the unit.
Former PLAN officer Yao Cheng, who fled to the United States in 2016, told Voice of America (VOA) that Xi has lost control of the rocket force and asserted that the PLA is increasingly unwilling to pledge allegiance to the CCP leader. He also called Wang, whom he served with in the navy, an “incompetent” leader.

“He’s someone who is obedient and follows the boss’s lead,” Yao told VOA. “His weakness is that he has long served as a staff officer, has never led troops and lacks specialties. He can’t possibly manage the rocket force well, because for one, he’s an amateur whom the elite force will be unconvinced with and look down on.”
Though many details about the PLARF reshuffle remain a mystery, an analyst told The China Project in August 2023 that one thing is clear: “That it is very difficult to eliminate corruption, even for a leader as powerful as Xi,” Neil Thomas, a fellow for Chinese politics at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis. “That there is still corruption in China after Xi began his anti-corruption campaign is no surprise.”
Fueling more speculation about dissension in the ranks were questions in early September 2023 on the status of then-Chinese defense minister Li Shangfu, who U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel said had not been seen publicly for weeks.
“President Xi’s cabinet lineup is now resembling Agatha Christie’s novel ‘And Then There Were None.’ First, Foreign Minister Qin Gang goes missing, then the Rocket Force commanders go missing, and now Defense Minister Gen. Li Shangfu hasn’t been seen in public for two weeks. Who’s going to win this unemployment race? China’s youth or Xi’s cabinet? #MysteryInBeijingBuilding,” Emanuel posted on the social media platform X on September 7.
A week later, news reports confirmed that Chinese authorities had placed Li under investigation on unspecified charges related to procurement of military equipment, Reuters reported.
“The foreign minister and the defense minister are both externally facing interlocutors with the international community. They have been potentially removed without explanation or consideration for global perception,” Thompson told CNN. “This fuels the crisis of confidence in China. It underscores the lack of transparency and the complete opaque nature of decision making in China.”

News reports surfaced in October 2023 that Li had officially been fired as defense minister, removing him from his state positions within the CMC and as one of the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) five state councilors — a senior position in the cabinet that outranks a regular minister, according to CNN. Before Li’s promotion to defense minister in March 2023, he served as head of the CMC’s equipment development department in charge of weapon procurement. The U.S. sanctioned him in 2018 over the PRC’s purchase of Russian weapons, according to CNN.
Reports also surfaced that Qin was under CCP investigation over “lifestyle issues,” a phrase that typically means sexual misconduct, according to Forbes. Multiple news sources reported that Qin allegedly had an affair and fathered a child in the U.S.
Security implications
The impact of the PLARF leadership changes on regional security and stability remains unknown. Xi’s moves have, however, prompted conversations about the likelihood of a nuclear triad that would help strengthen the PLA’s nuclear deterrent capabilities.
The PLA “will eventually integrate the navy’s and the air force’s nuclear defense and offense capabilities. This is an inevitable trend,” Chang Ching, a research fellow at the Taipei-based Society for Strategic Studies, told VOA. “I believe that nuclear weapons-related officers from both the navy and the air force have already served in the rocket force before the top leadership reshuffle. China’s finally moving toward a nuclear force with a unified command structure.”
Chang said some have questioned whether Wang, the new rocket force leader, once worked within the PLAN’s nuclear missile unit or if his new deputy, Xu, had experience with the air force’s bomber squadron. If either had, that could bolster speculation of a triad.
The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) estimates Beijing has stockpiled upward of 400 nuclear warheads as it works toward upgrades to deliver them by air, land or sea. Experts project the PRC will have more than 1,000 warheads by the end of the decade, U.S. Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM) Commander Gen. Anthony Cotton told the U.S. House Armed Services Committee on Strategic Forces in March 2023.
Unconstrained by arms control treaty limitations, the CCP is fielding a new generation of mobile missiles, with multiple independent targetable reentry vehicles and penetration aid capabilities, according to Cotton.
The CCP’s nuclear capabilities exceed those for its long-professed policy of “minimum deterrence,” Cotton said, and the PLA’s capabilities are growing at an alarming rate. Beijing is making “substantial” investments to expand its inventory of air-, land- and sea-based nuclear delivery platforms and building the infrastructure to support the significant expansion of its nuclear force.
“The trajectory of the PRC’s nuclear advancements points to a large, diverse nuclear arsenal with a first-strike offensive capability and a high degree of survivability, reliability and effectiveness,” Cotton said. “When considered in the context of its heavy investment in NC3 [nuclear command, control and communications enterprise operations] as well as increased readiness, the PRC’s nuclear modernization highlights emergent capabilities that could provide it with a spectrum of first-strike offensive options before and during a crisis or conventional conflict. The PRC may believe that nuclear weapons represent a key component of its counter-interventions strategy and could use these weapons coercively against our nation, allies or partners.”
Modernization at an alarming pace
Like USSTRATCOM, U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) views as alarming the pace at which the PLA continues to modernize.
“It would be naive to think that their sprint to develop advanced cyber tools, maritime capabilities and hypersonic technology has only regional implications as the PRC continues to develop advanced long-range conventional and strategic capabilities and the infrastructure necessary to project military power at greater distances,” USNORTHCOM Commander Gen. Glen D. VanHerck told the U.S. House Armed Services Committee in March 2023. “Underpinning this growth is a rapid expansion that is on pace for the PRC to expand their nuclear stockpile from what DOD estimates is over 400 today to about 1,500 by 2035.”
Open-source analysis provides clues about Beijing’s nuclear modernization motivation, but more research is needed to uncover the heft of Xi’s plans.
“Analyzing just the capabilities that China is developing raises as many questions as it answers,” Fiona Cunningham, assistant professor of political science at the University of Pennsylvania and a nonresident scholar in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, wrote in a June 2023 report titled “The Unknowns About China’s Nuclear Modernization Program,” published by the Washington, D.C.-based Arms Control Association. “China is building capabilities that improve its ability to retaliate following a nuclear attack and its ability to threaten nuclear first use for coercive leverage in a conventional conflict. It can now do things with nuclear forces that it could not do in the past.”
Such changes, Cunningham asserts, undermine the confidence policymakers and analysts once had that Xi would use nuclear weapons only out of desperation.
“Why did China wait until now to build a much more robust retaliatory capability? Why is it investing in silo basing after two decades of seeking a more mobile nuclear force to increase the survivability of its arsenal? Is it developing capabilities that could enable a quicker shift to a first-use posture in the future as a hedge or for other reasons?” Cunningham wrote. “There are a number of possible factors driving China’s nuclear modernization. New research indicates that developments in U.S. capabilities are responsible at least partly for the changes, but China’s reaction to such developments is more dramatic than in the past, which suggests that other factors likely are at play.”