It is obvious that Xi will now work to rein in the military leadership. Considering their sword rattling earlier this year which I presumed belonged to one faction or the other, this should not be surprising. Particularly when it was quite reckless as well.
It also speaks volumes that even military corruption now has to be reined in and it appears that hte military was central to the organ harvesting racket that has been slowly uncovered. All this provides Xi ample cover for the elimination of compromised generals.
In the meantime, the Chinese economy is finally consolidating and this may continue for a long time. Fifteen years would be just about right.
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Chinese Regime Pads Military’s Pockets Through Murder
Military hospitals have been the main location for forced organ harvesting
By Joshua Philipp, Epoch Times | January 23, 2015
The Chinese regime is looking for ways to rein in its military
officers, who have for decades been tapping extracurricular sources for
extra income. Chinese Communist Party leader Xi Jinping recently
announced that military officials will need to live off their salaries,
noting there shouldn’t be any “grey income.”
The new order from Xi may have China’s military officers shaking in
their boots. Around the same time Xi made the announcement, 16 Chinese
generals were placed under investigation, and it’s very likely a
longstanding policy that has quietly supported corruption in China’s
military is playing in the backs of their minds.
These areas of “grey income” could tie to some of the most serious
human rights abuses taking place in China today. Recent evidence
suggests the Chinese regime is buying the loyalty of military officers
with black market industries and blood-stained money.
“The military has a lot of leeway in the Chinese society, ‘entrepreneurial’ leeway.”
“The military has a lot of leeway in the Chinese society,
‘entrepreneurial’ leeway,” said Ethan Guttman, author of the
recently-released book The Slaughter: Mass Killings, Organ Harvesting, and China’s Secret Solution to Its Dissident Problem, in a phone interview. “They make money for themselves, but they also make money for the military.”
Murder for Profit
A major income stream for the military has been the forced harvesting
of the organs of living Falun Gong practitioners for use in
transplantation.
Falun Gong, also called Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice rooted in
ancient Chinese culture that includes meditation and a moral philosophy
based on truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance.
The Chinese regime estimated in early 1999 that there were up to 100
million Chinese people practicing Falun Gong in China—a number greater
than the membership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). These
practitioners included members of the military, the security forces, and
the CCP.
In April 1999 the then-head of the CCP, Jiang Zemin, circulated a
letter to the Politburo. He warned of how many people were practicing
Falun Dafa, claimed they were manipulated by foreign forces, and saw the
traditional moral teachings of Falun Gong as a challenge to the CCP’s
ideology. On July 20, 1999, Jiang launched a campaign to eradicate the
practice of Falun Gong in China.
Just a year after the persecution began, the number of China’s organ
transplants—known for using prisoners as their sources—began increasing
dramatically.
Whenever an organ is harvested, all of the retail organs are taken, killing the victim.
Researchers believe that the organs are harvested while the victim is
still alive, in order to have the freshest possible organ for
transplantation. Whenever an organ is harvested, all of the retail
organs are taken, killing the victim.
While other prisoners of conscience—including Uyghurs and
Tibetans—are known to have been harvested, the predominant source for
the increase is believed by researchers to have been Falun Gong
practitioners.
At least 62,000 Falun Gong practitioners are believed to have been
killed for their organs between 2000 and 2008, according to estimates
from Guttman.
Canadian international human rights lawyer David Matas and former
Canadian secretary of state (Asia-Pacific) David Kilgour independently
reached a similar estimate for that time frame in their own
investigation using a different methodology.
Large-scale organ harvesting has continued since 2008, with the number of victims continuing to grow.
Matas told CQ Global Researcher in July 2011 that organ harvesting
brought US one billion dollars a year to participating hospitals, which
were mainly run by the military.
Former Defense Minister’s Admission
In an October 2014 phone call from an undercover researcher working
for the World Organization to Investigate the Persecution of Falun Gong
to Liang Guanglie, China’s former defense minister and head of its
military General Staff Department, Liang is recorded admitting his
knowledge of the Chinese military’s involvement in a murder-for-profit
operation.
The investigator said he was inquiring about a statement made by Wang
Lijun, the former vice-mayor and head of the Public Security Bureau in
Chongqing. Wang is famous for fleeing to the U.S. Consulate in Chengdu
in February 2012 in an event that sparked the current anti-corruption
campaign in China. Wang is also famous for having received an award for
research this police chief had directed on organ transplant surgery, research that involved thousands of organ harvesting operations.
The investigator told Liang that Wang said he once cooperated with
China’s military hospitals to research organ transplant surgery, and the
people used as sources for the organs were imprisoned Falun Gong
practitioners.
During the recorded phone call with the undercover investigator,
Liang first responded with caution. The investigator then asks, “Did you
hear about this when you were the Chief of the General Staff?”
Liang replied, “Yes, I did,” adding “I am in charge of military work, not these logistics matters.”
Liang then said, when asked whether China’s troops were responsible
for those providing the organs used for organ transplants, “I have heard
of this thing.”
The investigator continued, asking whether the Central Military
Commission—the Party organ that rules the military—discussed the forced
organ transplants. Liang replied, “They discussed this matter.”
While short, Liang’s comments are telling. His mention of “logistics
matters” was in reference to the Chinese military’s General Logistics
Department, which operated alongside the department Liang once headed.
While Liang’s department is in charge of warfighting and runs many of
China’s spy operations, the General Logistics Department controls the
military hospitals—and researchers say it’s in those hospitals that one
of the world’s most atrocious crimes is now taking place.
The General Logistics Department has built a national live organ bank
in China, using blood samples from Falun Gong prisoners of conscience,
Epoch Times reported in August 2014. Supervisors in the military were
given the power to arrest, detain, and execute anyone who tried leaking
information about their crimes.
The General Staff Department headquarters, which Liang was in charge
of from 2002 to 2007, took part by using its intelligence systems to
block information about the organ harvesting from leaking out of China,
according to the earlier report. The department heads China’s military hackers, its foreign spies, and agents involved in electronics intelligence.
Wang Zhiyuan, chairman of the World Organization to Investigate the
Persecution of Falun Gong (WOIPFG) and a former doctor at a Chinese
military air force hospital, said the new information gives additional
evidence on the military’s role in the Chinese regime’s persecution
against Falun Gong.
“Basically, the hospitals—the military health department—is managed
by the General Logistics Department,” Wang said in a phone interview.
“This work is carried out by the General Logistics Department.”
In an interview with New Tang Dynasty Television, Wang spelled out
one implication of the involvement of the General Logistics Department
and the knowledge the Central Military Commission had about the practice
of organ harvesting: “This means that the live organ harvesting from
Falun Gong practitioners has not randomly happened, but is a national
massacre carried out by the government and CCP authorities.”
Military Business
According to Guttman, military doctors have often appeared in his own
research into the Chinese regime’s system for forced organ harvesting.
“This has happened several times—in several cases where organs are
being harvested and military doctors appear,” Guttman said, noting that
in his own research “it became obvious the military centers were the
main centers for this.”
Guttman said based on interviews he has conducted he has found at
least seven military hospitals are involved in forced organ harvesting
of China’s prisoners of conscience. He added, however, “that’s just the
tip of the iceberg,” and noted that in addition to using Falun Gong
practitioners, the Chinese regime’s systems for forced organ transplants
also use Tibetans and Uyghurs as living sources.
The involvement of China’s military in the murder-for-profit scheme
comes from a deeply rooted system that even China’s leaders have warned
could become a cesspool for corruption.
From its inception, the CCP granted its military extra leeway to
conduct business. Under the regime’s founder, Mao Zedong, the military
dominated China’s agriculture sector, and played a large role in China’s
industrial and political systems—although its business ventures were
mainly limited to goods for the military itself.
The system changed after Mao’s death in 1976, when Deng Xiaoping came
to power. Deng was known for opening China to foreign trade, and his
relaxation of restrictions on business started with the Chinese regime’s
military.
“He basically said you need to find ways to pull your weight,”
Guttman said, referring to Deng’s role in China’s business-military
complex.
The Chinese regime’s military businesses began by opening sales to
the domestic market. It led to the creation of major state-run companies
under its military including giants like China Poly (international
trade and real estate) and China Xinxing (import and export, with 54
subsidiary companies), and to involvement in markets ranging from banks
to farms, and from hotels to brothels.
It wasn’t until the early 90s that the Chinese regime’s leaders decided to start reining in the military’s business ventures.
According to a 2008 report from Dr. Gary Busch, publisher of the
web-based news journal of international relations Ocnus, “The reforms
were intended to keep management of PLA enterprises under the control of
senior military leaders and prevent lower-ranking officers from
becoming involved in the daily functioning of military companies.”
Then, in 1998, the system burst. The then-CCP leader, Jiang Zemin,
called a meeting where he announced that “China’s military is no longer
in business.”
At the time, according to the Hong Kong-based but Beijing-influenced
Phoenix News, the People’s Liberation Army troops owned 70 car
factories, close to 400 laboratories, and 1,500 hotels.
The announcement did not actually end the Chinese military’s
alternative sources of income, however. Instead it merely changed how
the military’s officers got their pockets stuffed.
Grey Income
Jiang was the leader of the Central Military Commission, and during
his announcement he was flanked by top generals within the military.
According to a 2001 report from the Hoover Institute, several top-level
generals publicly seconded his announcement. They included Chief of the
General Staff General Fu Quanyou, General Logistics Department Director
Wang Ke, and General Armament Department Director General Cao Gangchuan.
Just one year later, on July 20, 1999, Jiang launched the persecution
against Falun Gong, and according to recent findings from WOIPFG, Jiang
gave orders to begin the organ harvesting in 2000.
According to Hu Zhiming, a former officer of the People’s Liberation
Army Air Force, the reforms only affected lower-level officers, and
businesses officially under the military. “The high-level officers can
use their military background as leverage for business and profit,” he
said in a phone interview. “That is still going on.”
Hu defected from China and testified before Congress in 2012 about
his experience being twice imprisoned and tortured in China for
practicing Falun Gong.
Hu said that while Jiang ended the Chinese military’s surface-level
business ventures, “what he did contributed enormously to the corruption
of the military.”
What took the place of the surface-level businesses was a deeper
system of corruption, and new ways to buy loyalty of military
officers—which the organ harvesting became a part of.
“The Jiang clique, in order to buy off the military, and make it listen to him and the CCP, they used this corrupt system.”
“The Jiang clique, in order to buy off the military, and make it
listen to him and the CCP, they used this corrupt system,” Hu said.
According to Sarah Cook, senior research analyst at Freedom House,
one of the key problems is that in China the military is not meant
specifically for national defense. Its specified role is to protect the
Chinese Communist Party—and this ties directly into its emphasis on
indoctrination over combat training, and in the regime’s interests to
pay off military leaders in order to ensure their loyalty.
“It’s the Party’s army,” Cook said in a phone interview. “It also
functions as the national army, but it has these split missions, and it
has these tensions because these two missions often contradict each
other.”
“They want to let the military officers get rich and allow them to profit, because they want to maintain their loyalty.”
“A national army would be around protecting the country,” she said,
“but a Party’s army ends up with all these operations within it that
involve political loyalty.”
“There are interesting things the Party needs to do to maintain their
loyalty,” she said, “in the sense they want to let the military
officers get rich and allow them to profit, because they want to
maintain their loyalty.”
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