Xi Jinping’s military purge is bleeding into his elite circle of generals commanding China’s forces

Xi’s anti-corruption crackdown has pushed into the highest echelons of China’s military recently, and it looks like the purge still isn’t finished.

A top-ranking admiral in China’s Central Military Commission — the highest body commanding its forces — has been placed under investigation, the country’s defense ministry said on Thursday.

Adm. Miao Hua, who’s in charge of the Political Work department, was suspended and is being probed for “serious violations of discipline,” said ministry spokesperson Wu Qian at a press briefing.

That accusation usually refers to corruption.

An investigation into a commission member like Miao is significant because the six-member committee, helmed by Chinese leader Xi Jinping himself, is the top body that oversees China’s military forces.

However, Miao is not one of the commission’s vice-chairmen, who are usually considered China’s strategic leaders. Two People’s Liberation Army generals, Zhang Youxia and He Weidong, hold those positions.

Xi, who has consolidated much of China’s decision-making power under himself in the last 10 years, is the commission’s highest authority as chairman.

Miao, 69, was an army political commissar based in Fujian in the 1990s and early 2000s, about the same time Xi was governor of the province.

The overlap between their rising careers led the two to be seen as having worked closely together. Two years after Xi became paramount leader in 2012, Miao was transferred to the PLA Navy to be its top political commissar.

The announcement of the probe into Miao comes as The Financial Times reported on Wednesday that Adm. Dong Jun, China’s defense minister, was also placed under investigation. The report cited unnamed US officials.

That would make Dong the third officer involved with the defense ministership to be implicated in a string of corruption probes. His two predecessors, Li Shangfu and Wei Fenghe, were found guilty in June of taking bribes.

Beijing has denied the FT’s findings, with a foreign ministry spokesperson dismissing them as “chasing wind and shadows.”

Unlike those in the Central Military Commission, the defense minister holds a mostly diplomatic and symbolic role and has no real operational command over China’s forces.

CNN reported that Miao “is seen as a political patron of Dong,” with both men having served in the PLA Navy.

In China, top officials are almost always found guilty in corruption investigations, though some have received reduced sentences.

Two vicechairmen of the Central Military Commission have been investigated before, but only after they exited the commission. Both were in the top-ranking body until 2012 when Xi rose to power.

The probes into the careers of the pair — Guo Boxiong and Xu Caihou — were launched in 2014 and 2015.

Since his beginning as paramount leader, Xi has championed a sweeping crackdown against rampant corruption in China’s central and local governments.

It has more recently involved purges in the military, including the ousting last year of several high-level generals and officials. The push has coincided with Xi’s heavy emphasis on modernizing China’s military and catching up in strength with US forces.