The China Manned Space Agency (CMSA) is a common element in an extraordinary number of high-level corruption arrests of military offices and defence-industry officials, a review of Chinese documents and official statements reveals.
The full implications are uncertain, but there is a clear possibility of involvement of the CMSA’s advance projects, maybe those with a military purpose. On the other hand, the agency may merely seem by happenstance to be at the centre of military corruption, since its management is heavily military.
The arrests since 2019 include four members of the CMSA’s governing committee and officials from big state-owned aerospace and defense companies associated with the agency.
The arrested people include these three senior military officers:
—Li Shangfu, former defense minister and director of the Equipment Department of the People’s Liberation Army and the director of the CMSA from 2017 to 2022;
—Qian Weiping, former deputy director of the Equipment Department and deputy director of the CMSA from 2017 to 2022; and
—Shang Hong, deputy commander of the (now disbanded) PLA Strategic Support Force (SFF) and a member of the CMSA governing committee.
Qian was also the first of nine people who have been investigated since 2019 and have been leaders of the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force, the service that operates surface-to-surface strike missiles, including nuclear ones.
Soon after the disappearance of Li Shangfu in August 2023, three officials from military state-owned enterprises were arrested for corruption and suspended from China’s advisory political body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference:
—Liu Shiquan, the head of China North Industries Group, an arms maker known as Norinco;
—Wu Yansheng, the head of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp (CASC), the main contractor to the national space program and a builder of ballistic missiles; and
—Wang Changqing, the deputy head of the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corp (CASIC), which builds a wide variety of missiles systems, including surface-to-air batteries.
The heads of the latter two state enterprises were also members of the CMSA’s governing committee.
Liu Shiquan was not a member, but, like Shang Hong, his organisation has worked closely with the CMSA.
The CMSA leads the China Manned Space Engineering Program, which oversees human spaceflight efforts—for example, the series of Shenzhou missions to low orbit. In the latest Shenzhou mission, three astronauts flew in April to China’s space station.
Human spaceflight itself has little military value, but technologies developed for it could have military applications. The closeness of the CMSA’s military connection is best expressed by the agency’s position in the government hierarchy: it comes under the jurisdiction of the PLA’s Equipment Department.
Li Shangfu led the CMSA for five years when he was the chief of the Equipment Department. Moreover, the agency’s deputy heads include the deputy director of the Equipment Department and chiefs of major aerospace companies. Qian Weiping was Li’s deputy at both the department and the CMSA.
Other members of the CMSA’s governing committee come from top defense research institutes and state enterprises. For example, heads of CASC, CASIC and China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC) served as deputy commanders. Military-focused CETC is a key player in exploiting civilian electronic technology for the PLA.
The country also has a China National Space Administration, but, unlike NASA or the Indian Space Research Organisation, it doesn’t run space programs. Instead, program agencies and major assets, such as launching sites, are largely controlled by the armed forces.
Defence-sector state-owned enterprises and major research institutions, such as the Chinese Academy of Sciences, also play critical roles in the activities of the CMSA through institutional platforms such as China Manned Space Engineering Operation and Management Support Center established in 2019 in Beijing.
The PLA has emphasised military-civil fusion since 2015, so, however the CMSA supported the armed forces after its establishment 1993, there is probably greater interest now in using its technology in military equipment.
The announcement by the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party of Li Shangfu’s trial in mid-July referred to his actions damaging the political ecology of the military equipment industry.