China dismisses General Zhao Zongqi from powerful body

China dismisses General Zhao Zongqi from powerful body

BEIJING, August 31 [VoM News]: China’s top soldier, General Zhao Zongqi, implicated in deadly border clashes with India, has been expelled from China’s chief political advisory body and other groups according to Reuters news agency.

Zhao had commanded China’s Western Theatre Command – responsible for managing military operations along China’s border in the west including the frontier with India, and was their first commander.

His dismissal, according to Chinese state media, forms part of a sweeping anti-corruption drive sweeping through the ranks of China’s military overseen by President Xi Jinping.

Who Is Zhao Zongqi?

A man born in 1955 in Heilongjiang province, China, he had been with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) for about 16 years by the time he entered military school.

He had served in combat during the 1979 China-Vietnam War. He participated in operations in Lao Cai, Cam Duong and Sa Pa according to reports. Between 1986 and 1988, Zhao was a student studying Arabic at a military language institution, later becoming the first officer posted to the Chinese embassy in Tanzania as military attaché.

Zhao went on to command a mountain brigade that had only just been formed, served with troops stationed in the Tibet Military Region, and commanded both PLA’s 13th Group Armies and 14th Group Armies.

In 2007, the general had been chief of staff in Jinan. By 2009, he had gained the rank of lieutenant general. The year after, he had taken over the command of the Jinan Military Region, and in the same year, joined the Communist Party of China’s Central Committee.

Zhao became general in 2015.

The general officially had command over China’s military operations during two contentious border incidents with India – the Doklam standoff in 2017 and the Galwan Valley clashes with India in 2020 as the newly appointed first commander of the PLA’s newly created Western Theatre Command from 2016.

### China sacks top military officials

Zhao’s dismissal comes alongside a large scale purges targeting key military leaders following investigations into alleged serious breaches of discipline and law. His two superiors at China’s highest Military Commission including its Vice Chairman Zhang Youxia and other member, Chief of Joint Staff Department Liu Zhenli had also been dismissed by the full Central Military Commission, of which Xi Jinping is the chair. That had left only Xi Jinping and another member, two of the seven on the key military ruling body.

His interests were not strictly limited to his military career; photography was reportedly a hobby of Zhao, which he allegedly used to photograph different aspect of military life. And the General was reportedly hired to be a military consultant on the Chinese television serial “Soldiers Sortie”, focusing mainly on related military minutiae.