China's Military Purges Test War-Fighting Readiness as Xi Tightens Grip

The expulsion of two of China's most senior military figures from the Communist Party and the armed forces has renewed scrutiny of how far the long-running anti-corruption drive has eroded the People's Liberation Army's ability to fight, even as it appears to have tightened President Xi Jinping's hold on the institution.

This week the ruling Politburo announced that Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli had been expelled from the party and the military. Zhang, a son of a close friend of Xi's father, had been widely regarded as the president's closest military ally and served as his deputy on the Central Military Commission, the country's top defence command body. Investigations into both men were first disclosed in January, but no formal punishments have yet been made public. The defence ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Diplomats and security analysts across the region are tracking the crackdown as Beijing accelerates military modernisation and expands deployments around Taiwan and contested areas of the South and East China Seas. While dozens of second-line officers have been moved into key posts across the CMC, theatre commands and individual services, five seats on the commission's ruling seven-person committee remain unfilled.

According to James Char, a Singapore-based scholar of Chinese security, the removal of proteges of Zhang and of Miao Hua, formerly the military's top uniformed political officer, has further consolidated Xi's authority. He said Xi can be expected to keep exercising decisive control over military affairs, and by extension over the party-state, since control of the PLA is central to control of the party.

Since taking power in 2012, Xi has overseen one of the most extensive campaigns against corruption and indiscipline in China's modern history, a drive that has prompted comparisons with Mao Zedong. Millions within the bureaucracy have faced investigations of varying intensity, along with numerous senior party, government and military officials.

Tian Shichen, president of the Chinese think tank the Global Governance Institution, rejected the suggestion that the purges have weakened the armed forces, arguing that removing corrupt elements strengthens political cohesion and combat effectiveness. The official PLA Daily said in an editorial that Zhang and Liu had seriously contributed to political and corruption problems that undermined the party's absolute leadership over the military and endangered its foundation of governance, causing enormous damage to the force's political development and combat effectiveness.

The scale of the turnover has not halted China's current defence posture. Weapons testing continues and exercises have grown increasingly complex. But analysts question the effect on more demanding operations, particularly any full-scale contingency involving Taiwan, the democratically governed island Beijing regards as its own territory and whose sovereignty Taipei strongly rejects.

Zhang was the most senior officer with actual combat experience, gained during a brief but bloody border war with Vietnam in 1979, the last time China engaged in real fighting. Ruby Osman, a senior policy adviser on China at London's Tony Blair Institute, said it is hard to imagine upheaval on this scale not creating problems for complex operations, including a Taiwan scenario, though she noted the PLA has insulated routine operations from the turmoil. In her view, Xi sees short-term disruption as a price worth paying for long-term discipline and combat readiness.

The crackdown initially focused on corruption, including procurement by the PLA's elite Rocket Force, which controls China's conventional and nuclear-armed missiles. Increasingly, however, it has taken on a political character, which some analysts read as a reminder that the PLA exists above all to serve the party rather than the nation. Tian dismissed foreign characterisations of Xi's personal power as concentrated.

Char said he does not expect the commission's top panel to be filled before the Communist Party's full congress in late 2027, when Xi is widely expected to secure a fourth five-year term, a prospect analysts say is intensifying the demand for internal security. The delay could continue to hamper engagement between China's military and foreign counterparts, a factor diplomats consider critical as regional tensions persist.

Defence Minister Dong Jun remains in his post, but he sits on neither the Politburo nor the CMC and is seen as less powerful than many of his international peers. Zhang's 2024 meeting in Beijing with then U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan was viewed at the time as a breakthrough in military ties between Washington and Beijing, and it remains unclear who will succeed him.

Bonnie Glaser, who heads the Indo-Pacific programme at the Washington-based German Marshall Fund of the United States, said Xi may be making some decisions on his own in the interim, while noting that the PLA can still carry out orders through the joint staff, theatre commands, services and party apparatus.