In mid-March, observers noted that the website of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, the country’s highest honorary body for engineering and technology, had quietly deleted the profiles of three of its members: Wei Yiyin, Zhao Xiangeng, and Wu Manqing. A check of the academy’s full membership list confirmed their absence. A November 2025 archived version of the same list had shown all three men listed under the academy’s information and electronic engineering division.
All three are senior figures in China’s defense industrial complex.
Wei Yiyin, born in September 1962 in Anshan, Liaoning province, is a missile guidance and control specialist who spent decades at the China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation, the state defense conglomerate responsible for cruise and ballistic missile programs. He served as president of the corporation’s Third Research Institute and later as a deputy general manager. He was elected to the Chinese Academy of Engineering in 2019.
Zhao Xiangeng, born in November 1953 in Xinzhou, Shanxi province, is a condensed-matter physicist and nuclear weapons engineer. He led China’s Institute of Applied Physics and Computational Mathematics and later served as president of the China Academy of Engineering Physics, the institution responsible for designing and maintaining China’s nuclear warhead stockpile. He was elected to the Chinese Academy of Engineering in 2011 and served as an alternate and then full member of the Party’s Central Committee across its 17th and 18th congresses. A May 2025 article from Tencent News described Zhao as one of the principal technical leaders of China’s nuclear weapons physics research and a central figure in advancing warhead development after the global Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty effectively ended live testing. He has since pivoted toward nuclear medicine, agreeing to lead a research station at Shanxi Medical University.
Wu Manqing, born in August 1965 in Tongcheng, Anhui province, served as director of the 38th Research Institute under what was then the Ministry of Mechanical and Electronic Industry, and later rose to become chief engineer and then general manager of the China Electronics Technology Group Corporation, the state-owned enterprise that dominates military electronics, radar systems, and signals intelligence infrastructure for the Chinese armed forces. He was elected to the Chinese Academy of Engineering and served as a deputy director of the academy’s Party committee. He was removed from his position at the electronics group in September 2022 and, in July 2025, stripped of his academy vice-presidency.
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A US military report on China’s nuclear warheads preceded the purge by four days
On March 9, 2026, the China Aerospace Studies Institute, a research center affiliated with Air University, the U.S. Air Force’s professional military education system, published a report titled “Dancing on the Blade: Nuclear Warhead Management in the PLA Rocket Force.” The document maps in detail the organizational structure and operational procedures governing how China’s Rocket Force, the branch of the military that controls the country’s nuclear and conventional ballistic missiles, stores, handles, and accounts for its nuclear warheads.
Four days later, the three engineers’ names disappeared from the academy’s website.
The pattern is difficult to ignore. In October 2022, the same institute published its first major report on the Rocket Force. Within months, one of the most sweeping purges in the history of China’s military followed: the entire senior leadership of the Rocket Force was removed, and multiple generals were subsequently placed under investigation for corruption and suspected intelligence leaks. Analysts described it as a near-total institutional collapse.
China’s defense industry has been shaken by successive purges for years
The removal of the three engineers is the latest tremor in a prolonged earthquake running through China’s military-industrial complex.
China operates at least twelve major state-owned defense conglomerates, covering nuclear weapons, rocketry, aviation, shipbuilding, armored vehicles, and electronics. All of them have now been touched by politically driven investigations.
In February 2026, the standing committee of the National People’s Congress, the Party-controlled legislature that functions as a rubber stamp for decisions already taken by the leadership, stripped three defense industry executives of their legislative credentials: Zhou Xinmin, former chairman of Aviation Industry Corporation of China; Liu Cangli, former president of the China Academy of Engineering Physics; and Luo Qi, former chief engineer of China National Nuclear Corporation.
At a March 2, 2026 session of the standing committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the Party’s political advisory body, five more defense-linked figures had their delegate credentials revoked: Cao Jianguo, former chairman of the Aero Engine Corporation of China; Zeng Yi, former chairman of China Electronics Information Industry Group; Zhang Dongchen, former chairman of China Satellite Network Group; Fan Youshan, former general manager of the China Electronics Technology Group Corporation; and Zhang Kejian, former director of the State Administration for Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense. All five were simultaneously removed from any remaining official positions.
Wu Manqing’s own downfall had been reported separately. In October 2024, the financial news outlet Caixin reported exclusively that Chen Zhaoxiong, former chairman of the China Electronics Technology Group, had been taken away by investigators in late September, and that Wu had been detained earlier. Both removals were linked, according to the report, to testimony provided by He Wenzhong, a former deputy general manager of the group. The Caixin article was deleted shortly after publication, and reprints by other mainland outlets were taken down as well.
Why the timing of these removals follows a recognizable pattern
The sequence is now familiar to observers of Beijing’s internal politics. A U.S. research institution publishes a report drawing on open-source and possibly classified material to illuminate a sensitive corner of China’s military apparatus. Days later, someone inside that apparatus disappears from official records.
Whether the American report triggers the removals, or whether investigations already underway simply become visible in the report’s aftermath, is impossible to determine from the outside. What is clear is that China’s weapons science community, which had long operated with relative insulation from the political purges that periodically sweep the Party’s civilian and military leadership, no longer enjoys that protection.
The China Electronics Technology Group, where Wu Manqing served as general manager, ranks among the most strategically sensitive organizations in the Chinese defense sector. It holds a dominant position in military radar, electronic warfare systems, command-and-control networks, and cybersecurity infrastructure for the armed forces.
Zhao Xiangeng’s career trajectory is perhaps the most significant of the three. As one of the principal architects of China’s nuclear warhead program in the years after the test ban treaty, and as a Central Committee member during two Party congresses, his removal from the academy’s public roster carries implications that go well beyond the institutional.
By Li Deyan
