A paradoxical purge: Xi shows his power, and his trouble in controlling the PLA

The Strategist | Michael Clarke, Jade Guan

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ongoing purge of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) senior leadership has escalated with the expulsion of Central Military Commission vice chairman Zhang Youxia and former Joint Staff Department chief Liu Zhenli from the Chinese Communist Party. This high-level intervention targets deep-seated corruption and factional patronage networks that threaten centralized party control over the military.

Historically, informal networks of personal loyalty within the PLA have repeatedly bypassed formal chains of command, undermining the party's insistence on absolute political obedience. By combining charges of economic corruption with political disloyalty, the party leadership aims to prevent professionalization from fostering military autonomy. This is a political struggle. Consequently, the administration is forcing senior officers to balance operational expertise with strict ideological alignment. The long-term trajectory points toward even more intensive party supervision, though recurrent purges expose the limits of routine institutional control mechanisms within the defense establishment.

Comment

The purge of Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli reveals the persistent friction within the Central Military Commission regarding the enforcement of vertical command structures. By targeting the highest echelons of the joint staff, the Chinese Communist Party is attempting to dismantle informal patronage networks that dilute centralised authority. These parallel networks of personal obligation within the People's Liberation Army frequently distort formal operational reporting lines and compromise command integrity during regional crises.

This structural vulnerability mirrors the systemic command deficits exposed during the 2014 purges of former Central Military Commission vice chairmen Xu Caihou and Guo Boxiong. Those historical interventions similarly sought to eradicate factional fiefdoms that insulated senior commanders from direct oversight by the party centre. The recurrence of these patronage dynamics a decade later indicates that Xi Jinping's institutional reforms have failed to permanently subordinate People's Liberation Army officers to the formal Central Military Commission chain of command.

Strategic Question for Discussion

How can the Central Military Commission establish reliable command oversight when the very mechanisms used to enforce loyalty—such as the purges of Xu Caihou and Guo Boxiong—historically incentivise officers to build protective patronage networks?

The historical pattern suggests that top-down campaigns within the Central Military Commission often produce compliance rather than genuine systemic reform. Consequently, officers are likely to continue cultivating informal networks as a survival mechanism against arbitrary political targeting. This dynamic indicates that the tension between professional military autonomy and absolute party control remains an unresolved structural friction within the Chinese state.

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