Xi’s Military Purges Show How Little Power the Chinese Army Has

China’s military establishment recently expelled nine senior leaders of the Communist Party and the armed forces, including Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission He Weidong and Chief Political Commissar Miao Hua.

In the past few years, successive Defense Ministers Li Changfu and Wei Fenghe have been purged; Before them, the former vice-chairmen of the Central Military Commission, Xu Kaihu and Guo Boxiong, fell. Counting the many other officers who have been fired since President Xi Jinping came to power more than a decade ago, one almost forms a platoon of purged generals.

The ousted leaders came from the heart of China’s defense establishment. These sweeping purges were supposed to trigger violent institutional reactions or political shock waves. But despite the torrent of coup rumors that have spread in Chinese media abroad, the PLA has remained calm and may even have become more politically homogeneous than before.

The Chinese People’s Liberation Army spokeswoman posted several comments before and after the recently held Fourth Plenum, an important meeting of the Communist Party of China, stressing that “the Party controls the gun, and the gun should never lead the Party.” He stressed that the entire army should obey the command of the Chairman of the Central Military Commission. The newspaper portrayed recent investigations with senior officers as evidence that the Central Military Authority remains the ultimate source of political authority within the armed forces.

Many observers find this puzzling. Questions often pop up in my conversations with Chinese scholars and in Chinese-language discussions about X: Why don’t the kind of coups that erupt in semi-authoritarian regimes or immature democracies seem to happen in China at all?

The fall of the Gang of Four in 1976 may be an exception, but the purge of this group of extremist leaders who rose during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) occurred in the unique historical vacuum that followed the death of Mao Zedong. Even then, it could not be considered a military coup.

These arrests were carried out under the authority of Hua Guofeng and Yi Jianying – at the time, the legitimate leaders of both the Party and the People’s Liberation Army – reaffirming the rule that a gun serves the Party, not the other way around. Are Chinese generals simply cowards, afraid of death? Fear, of course, is a factor, but not the deciding factor.

The People’s Liberation Army’s failure to act was due to the institutional structure, not the personal psychological state. The Communist Party’s principle that “the Party controls the weapons” makes it impossible for the People’s Liberation Army to develop into an independent political entity, and Xi has taken this reliance to the absolute extreme.

Strictly speaking, the People’s Liberation Army is not a national army, although it operates as one. It is a Party army, the special armed force of the Communist Party of China. From the beginning, when Mao created the Red Army, he built party hegemony into its DNA. This principle has remained unchanged for nearly a century, and it forms the political foundation of the People’s Liberation Army.

But this is not just a slogan; It is a completely institutionalized and hermetic system. It ensures that the soldier’s ultimate loyalty is not to the Constitution or the state, but to the Central Committee and, ultimately, to its supreme leader. Every decision about operations, promotions, training and political education must serve the needs of the party.

This logic is built into the command structure itself: from the TMC to theater commands, mass armies, and brigades, at every level there are political commissars and political officers responsible for ideology, organization, and personnel. In a system copied directly from the Soviet Union, these commissioners reported directly to higher-level party committees, not to military commanders.

This dual command structure ensures that military action is always subject to political intentions. The People’s Liberation Army is not a neutral national institution, but rather the armed wing of the Party; Its real center of gravity lies in its political system. Even on the battlefield, the political commissar has the power to veto the commander’s order. Such an arrangement erases the possibility of an independent military authority, which is the concrete meaning of the phrase “the party controls the arms.”

The purpose of this principle is to keep the army strictly under party control and prevent soldiers from interfering in politics. Although the Chinese Communist Party came to power through armed struggle, after 1949, the military remained strictly subordinate to the Party, and was prohibited from interfering in intra-party disputes over policy or leadership—except in rare moments such as parts of the Cultural Revolution.

In order to institutionalize this dependency, China’s paramount leader has always held the positions of Party General Secretary and Supreme Commander of the Party Armed Forces at approximately the same time. Central Military Commission Chairman Deng Xiaoping was a partial exception, but even then, the party elite reached a tacit consensus that Deng Xiaoping was the final decision-maker in party affairs. Thus, he remained the de facto supreme leader, even without holding any official title.

For officers in the People’s Liberation Army, career advancement depends entirely on party organization within the armed forces. Political departments kept comprehensive records of each officer’s ideological position, family ties, and behavior; Any deviation can destroy a career. Over time, this generated a deep psychological dependency. Through vertical control over appointments, the party linked the army to its political system, turning it into an extension of party power.

This mechanism erased the army’s internal independence and horizontal cohesion, and left no basis for collective opposition. The experience of Lin Biao – the marshal once appointed as Mao’s successor and deputy commander of the People’s Liberation Army – illustrates this perfectly. When Lin Liguo, Lin’s son, discovered in 1971 that Mao had turned against his father and that the future of the family was in danger, he plotted to assassinate Mao. However, he only dared to trust a handful of his comrades; He couldn’t risk alerting the other loyalists. Today’s generals do not have any of the networks or loyalties that Lin Biao once did. Their entire careers are at the mercy of the party.

After Xi came to power, this system was pushed to its political limits. The sweeping military reforms launched in 2015—the most far-reaching reforms since the founding of the People’s Republic—were presented as an attempt to enhance the PLA’s combined combat capability, but also entailed a significant redistribution of military power.

The old seven military regions were replaced by five theater commands whose commanders reported directly to the Central Military Authority. The four powerful general departments – the General Staff, Political Department, Logistics, and Armaments – were abolished and replaced by 15 departments of the Central Military Service. All powers were re-centralized under the leadership of the CMC.

On the surface, these were administrative reforms; In fact, it was deeply political. They broke up regional patronage networks that had built up over decades, preventing any general from building an independent base. The old internal balance of power was destroyed and replaced by a single centralized structure: all powers flowed upward to the Chairman of the Central Military Commission himself.

In this context, Xi turned his supremacy as Chairman of the Central Military Commission into the PLA’s ultimate political arbiter and operational reality. Previously, while the CMC President nominally had final authority, the Vice Presidents and General Departments enjoyed significant autonomy, and major decisions were made collectively. Other than that. All matters – military, political, personnel or disciplinary – must now be submitted to the President’s personal approval; Other members may provide advice but cannot veto.

The drive chain has become a straight vertical line, eliminating side controls. After the reforms, officers’ promotions, appointments, and even family benefits now depend directly on their loyalty to Xi. Political performance has overtaken professional merit as the main criterion for advancement. The motto “Absolute Loyalty, Absolute Purity, Absolute Reliability” is engraved on every officer, and has almost replaced the traditional military code of honor. In fact, Xi not only restructured the army but also reshaped the political character of its personnel.

Given this institutional structure, even the harshest purges will not lead to rebellion. There are three other factors at work.

First, Xi Jinping’s purge has been cloaked in an anti-corruption slogan that legitimizes it. The corruption of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army has long been an open secret. Although public enthusiasm for Xi’s broader anti-corruption campaign has waned, no one sympathizes with the generals accused of trading promotions or taking kickbacks from arms purchases. Thus, Xi’s “tiger hunt” is consistent with the moral sense of the general public and the Party’s definition of political correctness.

Regardless of his or her true motives, once a target is labeled “corrupt,” they lose any claim to justice or solidarity. Within the party’s political language, anti-corruption means purity; Opposing him equals disloyalty. Logic is self-sealing. Purges become opportunities to reassert discipline, and any suspicions within the ranks find no legitimate outlet. Anti-corruption rhetoric is politically bulletproof.

Second, Xi has consolidated ideological control over both the party and the military. Since the 18th Party congress in 2012, the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, the Discipline Commission of the Central Military Commission, the propaganda organ and the political work system have cooperated to monitor ideological trends among officers. The internal regulations prohibit “improper discussion of the Central Committee” and “publishing unconfirmed information.”

Now political discipline and political rules override all other rules. Cadre evaluation systems have been re-engineered so that political loyalty becomes the decisive measure. Even an accidental slip can end an officer’s career. In this environment, the organization produces its own silent effect: opposition is subject to protective self-censorship. Soldiers learn to be silent, and to find safety in silence. Public professions of loyalty are the safest speech. Over time, this creates a political culture of external consensus and internal caution. What outsiders might call intellectual paralysis is, within the system, the very logic of survival.

Third, the purge functions as a mechanism of institutional fear. Every time a senior officer is killed, the military launches new campaigns of “self-inspection” and “warning education.” Cadres must write frequent self-criticisms and declarations of loyalty to prove their political fortitude. These ritual campaigns remind everyone that any ambiguity in situations can be interpreted as betrayal.

The result is the opposite of challenge: it is a race to show obedience. Political security becomes synonymous with personal safety, and loyalty becomes the most rational form of self-preservation. Through this cycle, fear becomes normalized as an instrument of governance. The asymmetry between risk and reward is enormous – silence ensures survival, speech ensures destruction. The generals are not ignorant of this dynamic; They totally get it.

By this logic, Xi’s ability to purge several generals without provoking institutional backlash is neither accidental nor the product of exceptional charisma. It is the natural result of the Chinese Communist Party’s system of control. The Party’s principle of “the Party controls the weapon” eliminates the military’s political subjectivity, the institutionalization of the president’s responsibility system completes the personalization of leadership, the anti-corruption moral authority provides legal and ideological cover, and the Party’s centralized discipline leaves no room for dissent. These elements intertwine to form a closed political system in which the army is not an independent force but rather an institutional embodiment of the authority of the Supreme Leader.

The generals’ refusal to resist is therefore not merely a matter of personal fear, but a structural inevitability. The political logic of the Chinese Communist Party does not depend on the will of individuals; Depends on regulatory oversight. The stability of the People’s Liberation Army does not arise from true unity of conviction, but from the a priori elimination of any alternative.

The leadership system adopted by Xi Jinping represents the final form of the “party controls the gun” principle, where power is no longer divided between the party and the army, but rather merged into a single nucleus. For the regime, this ensures the highest degree of political security. To outside observers, it reveals something deeper: in a military establishment completely controlled by the party, mutiny is not just unthinkable. It’s conceptually impossible.