A spectacular move against China’s top general by Chinese leader Xi Jinping that was announced at the weekend raises a burning question: is China’s military less effective today amidst an ongoing purge that has seen hundreds of officers removed, with more to come as Xi presses home his demand for political royalty?
The experienced General Zhang Youxia and the Joint Staff Chief Liu Zhenli—both members of China’s top military body, the Central Military Commission (CMC)—were placed under investigation for corruption and a multiple “serious” political offenses, China’s military and Communist Party media said on Saturday.
Just two people now remain on the much-reduced but powerful CMC, down from 11 when Xi became the leader of the Communist Party in 2012: Xi himself who is the chairman and a civilian with no direct military experience, and General Zhang Shengmin, a political warfare officer who is the head of the military’s discipline unit and who has access to the personnel files of all officers.
So the questions preoccupying analysts as they sift through the glowing embers of the drama in Beijing are:
What is the true military price of Xi’s demand for loyalty?
Or as Drew Thompson, a Senior Fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) at Nanyang Technological University, said in an interview with Newsweek, referring to the now-tiny CMC: “If Xi Jinping convenes a meeting, who comes to the meeting?”
Spokesperson Liu Pengyu at China’s embassy in Washington, D.C. reported Newsweek, “This decision once again underscores that China maintains a full-coverage, zero-tolerance approach to combating corruption.”
“The more resolutely the people’s armed forces fight corruption, the stronger, more united and capable they become,” Liu said.
Analysts expect there to be a military impact, though opinions remain divided when it comes to discerning the black box that is CCP politics and military affairs.
“There’s a sense of impermanence here that’s been going on a long time,” said Thompson, referring to the atmosphere within the PLA.
“That uncertainty about everybody’s survival and individual freedoms, it’s got to create tremendous stresses internally in the system, the interpersonal relationships between officers and subordinates and peers.”
But Thompson said that the PLA was currently perhaps less effective, rather than per se weakened: “I wouldn’t maybe frame it in terms of weakness or strength, maybe is best measured in terms of effectiveness and functionality.”
“The PLA has been steadily improving itself for 25 years, increasing the quality of the people it’s been recruiting. It’s less reliant on conscripts as more volunteers and more technically trained people. I mean, even, even the calories that the average soldier consumes have increased over time,” he said.
On the other hand, “today, they need technically competent people,” he said. “They need people who are not just slavishly devoted true believers, but think critically and are able to adapt.
“If you look at modern technology and things like electronic warfare and cyber and use jargon denied environments communications, then decentralization is critical… It’s not going to be effective if they can’t think for themselves, and if they can’t act at critical moments, if they’re entirely dependent on guidance from their bosses.”
A New Generation
Those who have fallen will be replaced by Xi, though when is unclear, said James Mulvenon, Vice President for Intelligence at Pamir Consulting in Washington, D.C.
“He’s been cutting really deep into the force. And yet, they still haven’t found bottom,” Mulvenon said. Other top officers have also fallen, including generals Xu Caihou and Guo Boxiong, approximately a decade ago, with many more since including the former Minister of Defense, Li Shangfu, and many in the Rocket Force, around 2023.
The experts all said that corruption was the norm in the PLA with a price tag attached to a rank, indicating that those who were felled may have had political problems too, or a blend of both.
Yet replacements were being trained up and would rise, Mulvenon said. “All of the candidates are, you know, very competent military officers. So they’re choosing among them. They’re choosing politically loyal people,” Mulvenon said.
Still, the chaos still hurts: “Any organization that has had this level of leadership sort of turmoil, and then you then transpose that onto a military organization for whom hierarchy and consistency and stability are essential for organizational performance.…Militaries are like cogs and wheels, and so this is particularly damaging,” Mulvenon said.
Trouble for Taiwan?
Opinion is divided whether this means greater or lesser risk for Taiwan, which Xi has threatened to invade, and analysts suggests has a 2027 timeline to be able to do so, though it has never been clear if Beijing would choose to attack.
“Zhang was counted as professional and cautious in the PLA,” said Peter Mattis, President of the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank.
“Purges precede action in communist regimes,” he said. “The next officers will know what is expected and the price of balking or the price of failure…The Taiwan risk or any kind of risk of war goes up.”
For Mulvenon, the instability in the PLA may immediately offer Taiwan a breathing space.
“The implication is that the PLA is too headless to exercise an invasion or actually succeed in invading right now. It creates a potential breathing space for Taiwan, which they should take advantage of to bolster resiliency in their military and critical infrastructure,” he said.
Others say it’s too early to tell.
“It is too early to draw conclusions from this episode for Taiwan contingencies,” said Ryan Hass, Director of the China Center at the Washington, D.C.-based Brookings Institution. Hass pointed to an increased risk of “misjudgment and miscalculation.”
“Xi faces a structural risk by wiping out the entire military high command through successive rounds of purges,” he said, adding, “It feels safe to assume, however, that Xi will be devoting greater mindshare to dealing with domestic politics for the coming months.”
Thompson, who knew Zhang and admired his intellect and experience, said: “If Xi Jinping feels politically threatened by his senior officers that have any capability, any intellect, any self confidence, then what does he surround himself with? Incompetent, insecure officers, that’s logical…that also degrades their abilities.
“The other side the equation is that perhaps the lack of a competent, well trained experience and self-secure officer corps limits his ability to actually command and control the PLA in the event of an operation.
Thompson added: “It’s one thing to do a scripted exercise where everybody knows their part. It’s entirely another thing to control an army in wartime, facing a real enemy in the fog of war.”
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