Just when China’s current crop of military leaders were watching a performance of Building The Great Wall With Flesh And Blood, organised by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Sino-Japanese war, the real drama within China’s military forces was unfolding for its former top soldier.

On July 30, rumours that Guo Boxiong, former vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) — China’s highest decision-making body in the military — had been implicated in the ongoing anti-corruption campaign were finally confirmed.

Following a decision made by the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) Politburo, the country’s state media announced that the retired general had been expelled from the party while his case had also been handed to the military procuratorate.

… James Char is a research analyst with the China Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Nanyang Technological University (NTU). He is the inaugural Wong Wai Ling Scholar in the Masters of Arts in Contemporary China at NTU. A version of this article first appeared in the Pacific Forum CSIS Pacnet newsletter.