I just find a bit mind-boggling that a colonel also has to work like 3-4 months to afford a square meter of apartment in Beijing. A colonel is a pretty powerful and influential position in most countries, typically in charge of a brigade (>1000 troops).
Unless they have additional undeclared sources of income...
It is not just about low pay that contributes to most, not merely much, of the corruption in the PLA.
Introduction The practice of buying and selling military positions and ranks has a long history, even if today it is strictly forbidden in almost all armed forces. For example, from 1683 to 1871, most commissions in the British Army were paid for.
sites.tufts.edu
It is about how the military is structured in relation to the government. The PLA is subordinate to the Party, not the government, so if the Party is corrupt, inevitably, the military will also be corrupt. If Party officials are corrupt, so will the generals and admirals be corrupt.
Those who have never served do not understand how this act...
"The practice of buying and selling military positions and ranks has a long history...
Paying bribes to more senior officers for promotions seems to be commonplace.
One journalist purportedly seeking admission to the PLA for their son was quoted a price of 80-90,000 Yuan (about USD 16,000), although the amount would vary considerably depending on a family’s connections."
...Is
THE worst thing you can do to the military. I said 'to', not 'for'.
In any military, the commissioned officers corps is supposed to be the 'brains' or theoretical source for the military about everything, from doctrines to culture to war fighting methodologies. Then the non-commissioned officers (NCO) corps is akin to the spine and nervous system of the body. The NCOs are the executors of orders from above. The NCOs knows the ins and outs of the military at every level about everything. To use popular vernacular, the unit's highest level NCO knows where 'all the bodies are buried'.
The financial bargaining of ranks puts personal greed over institutional needs and jeopardizes the military's war fighting capabilities regarding those theories and executions. The effects are %99.999 (five-nines) quickly entrenched as each individual immediately take steps towards self protection because each knows what was done was wrong. What happens is much of their time is spent on cultivating a network of similarly minded individuals for mutual protection (first), financial gains (second), and last comes military issues. Each who-benefited-whom relationship became a double edged sword for both sides as each can hold the other hostage. The inevitable result is that in the military, technical capabilities suffers as incompetent officers and NCOs rises thru the ranks in their careers, as with each rank comes increased capabilities for self protection instead of military related thinking.
What Xi is doing is noble and necessary, but if people thinks that the positive effects are immediate, they are wrong. Unknown wealth have been offshored. Officers who are removed because they proved to be corrupt and incompetent? What about their seconds? How morally straight and competent are these seconds? Remove them as well? Now who runs unit?
Those who were purged in Xi's anti-corruption drives?
"In January 2015, Chinese authorities announced that over 4,000 senior officers at the rank of Lieutenant Colonel or higher– including 82 generals–had been investigated, of whom 242 faced punishment ranging from a reprimand to imprisonment..."
They were
EXPENDABLES. Those that remained are just as guilty but their positions and shield of personal networks made them necessary (not indispensable) for now. If Xi is brutal about reforms, the first and second ranks of the PLA leadership would be gone in a month. Xi is being kind and everyone knows it.
Here is the typical USAF wing-king bios...
Now imagine someone running the wing, not merely the base, who has 1/3 of colonel Rowe's experience. 1/3 of his education and for a flying/training wing 1/3 of his flight hours.
