Skip to main content

Military Mystery

Nearly all news reports about Central Military Commission vice chairman He Weidong have been removed from China’s defense ministry website, fueling speculation.
|

Nearly all news reports about He Weidong (何衛東), vice chairman of China’s powerful Central Military Commission (中共中央軍委副主席), have been removed from the website of the country’s defense ministry, fueling speculation that he has fallen from grace. According to ETtoday (東森新聞雲), the removal of He-related content likely occurred last Friday, May 9.

A search for He’s name on the ministry website now yields only three results — all biography pages — compared to 203 results for fellow vice chairman Zhang Youxia (張又俠). TaiSounds (太報) reports that just one article remains about He, dated March 10, describing him presiding over a military delegation meeting. He has not made any public appearances since the closing of the National People’s Congress on March 11 this year. The Financial Times reported back in April that He was dismissed on corruption allegations, potentially making him the first Central Military Commission vice chairman to fall while in office since China’s reform and opening up.

More Stories from this Region

Navigating Risks From Chinese Apps

An investigation report by one of Taiwan’s leading independent media outlets documents the human rights risks posed by app services created in China.

Turtles for the Traitors

A recent study of posts from China’s security apparatus shows that in recent years the defined scope of perceived risk for foreign infiltration have expanded — including…

Drama Diplomacy

As military and diplomatic tensions rise across the Taiwan Strait, China is combining hard power moves with a soft approach — leveraging the cross-strait popularity of t…

A Corruption Story Goes Silent

One of China’s leading professional news outlets published a report this month on the corruption story behind a young official’s drowning in rural Hunan. Deleted within…

Thirty-Seven Years On, a Wound That Never Closed

A former star of Chinese state television turns her camera on a Taiwanese journalist wounded in the Tiananmen crackdown — and on the limits of what witnesses could say a…

Swipe Right for the Motherland

When China’s flagship official newspaper introduces a dating app and starts hosting singles mixers for troops and government workers, you know the demographic issue has…

Country and Regional Context

BACK TO MAP