China’s purges spur doubt about its military might

• By Greg Torode and Mei Mei Chu / Reuters, HONG KONG and BEIJING

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Purges of military leaders might have dented China’s war-fighting readiness, but are likely to have strengthened Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) grip on an institution that is a key source of power for the ruling Communist Party, diplomats and analysts say.

Regional military attaches and security analysts are watching the crackdown closely as China steps up efforts to modernize its military and boosts deployments around Taiwan, as well as hotly disputed parts of the South and East China Seas.

News this week of the ruling Politburo’s expulsion of two top military leaders, Zhang Youxia (張又俠) and Liu Zhenli (劉振立), from the Communist Party and the military, signaled the latest move in the long-running crackdown.

Zhang, the son of a close friend of Xi’s father, had long been seen as his closest military ally, serving as his deputy on China’s top defense command body, the Central Military Commission.

Analysts say dozens of second-line officers have filled key posts in the CMC, as well as theater commands and individual services, but five places are still vacant on its ruling seven-person committee.

China’s defense ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Xi’s hand has been further strengthened by the “defenestration” of proteges of Zhang and Miao Hua (苗華), formerly the military’s top uniformed political officer, Singapore-based Chinese security scholar James Char (蔡志祥) said.

“We can expect Xi to continue exercising decisive control and influence over China’s military affairs — and by extension, his dominance over the party-state, since whoever controls the People’s Liberation Army controls the party,” Char said.

Since coming to power in 2012, Xi has led one of the most extensive campaigns to root out corruption and indiscipline in China’s modern history.

It has, in part, prompted descriptions of him as the most powerful leader since founding figure Mao Zedong (毛澤東).

Millions within the vast bureaucracy have been investigated to varying extent, with scores of senior party, government and military officials also investigated and purged.

“Eradicating corrupt elements strengthens, rather than weakens, the political foundation, cohesion, and overall combat effectiveness of the armed forces,” said Tian Shichen (田士臣), president of the Chinese think tank Global Governance Institution.

Investigations of Zhang and Liu were first unveiled in January, though any formal punishments have yet to be revealed.

The extensive replacements of military brass mean that China maintains its current defense posture, continuing weapons tests and increasingly complex exercises.

However, question marks linger over the impact of the purges on China’s ability to wage war, particularly over Taiwan.

Zhang was the most senior officer with actual combat experience, gained in a brief but bloody border war with Vietnam in 1979, the last time China engaged in real fighting.

It “is hard to imagine upheaval on this scale wouldn’t create issues for more complex operations — including a full-scale Taiwan contingency,” China analyst Ruby Osman said, though the PLA had insulated routine operations from the turmoil.

“But Xi clearly sees short-term disruption as a price worth paying for long-term discipline and combat readiness,” added Osman, a senior policy adviser on China at London’s Tony Blair Institute.

Initially the crackdown targeted corruption, such as aspects of procurement by the PLA’s elite Rocket Force, the main body controlling China’s conventional and nuclear-armed missiles.

However, increasingly it has taken on a political edge, which some analysts see as a reminder that the PLA exists primarily to serve the Party, not the nation.

The PLA’s fundamental principle “has always been the absolute leadership of the party over the military,” said Tian, a former defense ministry official, dismissing foreign views that Xi’s “personal power” had been concentrated.

Zhang and Liu had “seriously contributed to political and corruption problems that undermine the Party’s absolute leadership over the military and endanger the Party’s foundation of governance,” the official PLA Daily said.

They had “caused enormous damage to the military’s political development, political ecosystem, and combat effectiveness,” it added in an editorial on Wednesday.

Char, of Singapore’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, said he did not expect the commission’s top panel to be filled until the Communist Party’s full congress late next year.

Xi is widely expected to cement his fourth five-year term at the event, a prospects analysts see as driving an intensified need for internal security.

That delay could continue to hamper engagement between China and foreign militaries, a factor diplomats consider critical as regional tension festers.

Chinese Minister of National Defense Dong Jun (董軍) remains in place, but he is neither on the ruling Politburo nor the CMC, and is considered less powerful than many international peers.

Zhang’s meeting in 2024 with then US national security adviser Jake Sullivan in Beijing was viewed at the time as a breakthrough in US-China military ties, but it is not clear who will replace him.

In the interim, Xi might be making some decisions on his own, said Bonnie Glaser of Washington-based think tank the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

“The PLA can still execute orders, of course, through the joint staff, theatre commands, services and party apparatus,” added Glaser, who heads the Fund’s Indo-Pacific Program.