Chinese Troops Craft Hotpot Using Missile Fuel

A shocking revelation has emerged that the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) of China is cooking hot pots using missile fuel and operating rockets filled with water.

According to Radio Free Asia (RFA), Yao Cheng, a former lieutenant colonel who served as a staff officer of the PLA Navy Command, testified on the 8th (local time) that naval soldiers cooked hot pot using missile fuel due to lack of funds. Hot pot is a traditional Chinese dish where meat and vegetables are cooked in a hot broth, which is known to require a long time to boil for a meal.

Former Lieutenant Colonel Yao said, “I saw soldiers cooking hot pot using solid missile fuel,” and revealed, “Many departments of the Chinese military are underfunded, and soldiers in need of money often sold equipment to make ends meet.” He added, “The budget allocated to the military was clearly sufficient, but the military’s leader embezzled it in the middle.”

He has not returned to China for about eight years since he fled to the United States in 2016. Yao, the former lieutenant colonel, said that during his service in the military if corruption was rampant in the Chinese military, the pain had to be fully borne by the rank-and-file soldiers. He said, “When I was in the military, we used to take fuel out of the aircraft fuel tank every time we cooked food and later we ran out of fuel to the point where we couldn’t operate the aircraft.”

RFA reported that this problem is not only happening within the Navy. A U.S. intelligence official said, “In the Rocket Force of the People’s Liberation Army, which was established in 2016, there are missiles filled with water instead of fuel, or missiles that cannot be launched due to non-standard military equipment. This all shows a glimpse of the serious corruption in the Chinese military.”

Previously, the National People’s Congress (NPC) of China, the equivalent of a parliament, dismissed Defense Minister Li Sangpu on October 24 last year. The NPC did not officially announce the reason for his dismissal, but some sources said he committed corruption related to the equipment of the Rocket Force. At the end of last month, nine high-ranking military officials, including Zhang Zhong, Liu Guangbin, and Li Weichao, were dismissed. The reason for their dismissal is also known to be corruption related to military equipment procurement.