By Benjamin Kang Lim
BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese President Hu Jintao is using a carrot-and-stick approach to try to rein in recalcitrant generals and further consolidate power, military and political sources and analysts said.
Hu has yet to assume full control of the People's Liberation Army after taking over the military in 2004 and has been unsettled by perceived challenges to his legitimacy by outspoken generals, especially "princelings" who boast privileged family backgrounds, they said.
With corruption widespread, Hu singled out and sacked Wang Shouye as navy deputy commander in what one former Communist Party official said was a warning to unsubmissive generals.
"It's to kill the chicken and scare the monkey," the former party official told Reuters, quoting a Chinese saying.
In a country where the party demands absolute obedience from the military, several generals have unceremoniously stood out by speaking their minds.
Hu was upset when Lieutenant-General Liu Yazhou, a son-in-law of the late president Li Xiannian, and eight other officers called for political reform in an open letter last year.
Major-General Zhu Chenghu, said to be a grandson of the late parliament chief and Long March veteran Zhu De, told reporters last year China could use nuclear weapons against the United States in the event of a U.S. attack over self-ruled Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own.
Lieutenant-General Wang Zhiyuan, a son of China's late top negotiator with Taiwan Wang Daohan, told a Beijing-funded Hong Kong newspaper in March that China will develop an aircraft carrier group, fuelling fears of a Chinese military build-up.
"The PLA is not very obedient," a source with ties to the leadership said. "This was unthinkable during Mao's days."
The outspoken generals have dented Hu's efforts to control the military and complicated China's diplomacy, in particular with Washington, which has been scrutinising the PLA.
As an inducement, Hu, who replaced Jiang Zemin as Communist Party chief in 2002 and president in 2003, has promoted five princeling generals to senior posts in a bid to win them over.
But Hu has also passed over many officers for promotion to full general rank even though they were eligible for elevation, one military source said.
Hu has promoted 12 to the status of four-star general, or one-third of the total. Only one is a princeling.
About 1,000 of the PLA's top brass will be audited this year, a move analysts say is much about curbing corruption as it is about taking out defiant generals.
Corruption was virtually snuffed out in the years after the Communists swept to power in 1949, but has staged a comeback in the wake of market-oriented reforms over the past two decades.
The rivalry between Hu and princelings -- the children of the country's top incumbent, retired or late leaders and their spouses -- is not new.
Princelings emerged from political wilderness after the chaotic Cultural Revolution ended in 1976, but lost out to "sons of the people" in a struggle in the 1980s for the leadership of the Communist Youth League, Hu's power base.
"In their heart of hearts, princelings look down on the sons of the people," said Zhang Zuhua, a former Youth League official.