Bonny Lin, Brian Hart, Thomas J. Christensen
On January 24, 2026, China’s Ministry of National Defense announced that the military’s top general, Zhang Youxia, and the chief of the Joint Staff Department, Liu Zhenli, had been placed under investigation for serious disciplinary and legal violations. The downfall of these two senior generals marks the most dramatic move yet in Xi Jinping’s years-long campaign to gut the leadership of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The removal of Zhang, Liu, and several other generals from the Central Military Commission (CMC) has left only one general, Zhang Shengmin, serving on China’s top military decisionmaking body alongside Xi. However, the purges within the CMC are only the tip of the iceberg. Since 2022, over 100 senior PLA officers from across virtually all areas of the armed forces have been swept aside or gone missing, amounting to an unprecedented purge of China’s military.
The scope and depth of these purges showcase Xi’s resolve to renovate the PLA, root out corruption, eliminate obstacles to his ambitious military modernization objectives, and ensure absolute political loyalty. The purges raise serious questions regarding the current state of PLA readiness and what the future might hold for the force. This report brings together leading experts on the PLA to address some of these most critical questions, with the recognition that our understanding of what is unfolding is at best partial. The analyses in this report draw on a groundbreaking 2026 CSIS Database of Chinese Military Purges developed by the CSIS China Power Project with significant contributions from Suyash Desai and support from Jonathan A. Czin, Allie Matthias, and John Culver from the Brookings Institution.
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