Chinese leader Xi Jinping is intensifying a major purge of top military and Communist Party officials that he began two years ago, a move expected to bolster his already formidable power.
While ostensibly aimed at rooting out corruption and enforcing party discipline, the purge is nearly unprecedented in terms of both the number and rank of the toppled officials. This suggests the removals are as much about Mr. Xi’s strategy to control China’s military and political elite as they are about individual malfeasance.
A plenum of the party’s ruling Central Committee last week expelled more members from its ranks – 14 members and alternates – than any such meeting since 2017. Nearly 1 in 6 of the 376 officials named to the committee when its term began in 2022 were absent from the plenum. That was the lowest attendance at such a meeting since the late 1970s, experts say, and an indication of the scope of officials who have fallen into disfavor.
Why We Wrote This
Top Chinese leaders generally keep their machinations to themselves. But the current purge of top generals and Communist Party officials suggests that President Xi Jinping is maneuvering to ward off potential rivals for the top job, as well as to curb corruption.
Perhaps most striking was the formal ousting of nine generals, including He Weidong, who was a member of the party’s 24-man Politburo and the No. 2 official on the powerful Central Military Commission (CMC), chaired by Mr. Xi. General He was the first vice-chairman of the CMC to be purged in decades – since Marshal He Long was removed at the start of Mao Zedong’s radical Cultural Revolution in 1967.
That leaves the CMC, the pinnacle of China’s military leadership, which oversees its 2-million-strong armed forces, with only four of its seven seats filled.
“It’s quite jarring – these are very, very senior people,” says Lyle Goldstein, director of the Asia Program at Defense Priorities, a U.S. think tank. “It is almost unprecedented, the removals at this level.”
The recent purges of Chinese generals reflect the challenge that Mr. Xi faces to ensure he keeps the military in check. Mr. Xi understands well Mao’s dictum that, in China, “the party controls the gun,” says Dr. Goldstein, “but in practice it’s quite difficult because the military has so much power and prestige.” Mr. Xi, he says “wants this very complete control.”
Corruption long a target
Since coming to power as China’s top leader in 2012, Mr. Xi has made anti-corruption a signature policy – with the dual purpose of rooting out the graft that is endemic in China’s opaque, one-party state while also eliminating perceived political rivals.
Under Mr. Xi, millions of party, government, and military officials have been investigated, sacked, and jailed for corruption, a crackdown largely welcomed by ordinary Chinese citizens.
When he won a rare, third five-year term as head of the party in 2022, Mr. Xi vowed to push the anti-graft drive further. In 2023, that campaign targeted the People’s Liberation Army’s rocket force and equipment department, eventually netting two defense chiefs and numerous generals.
Mr. Xi has “real concerns about old-fashioned corruption,” says Jonathan Czin, a fellow in the John L. Thornton China Center at the Brookings Institution. “There’s a ton of money sloshing around the system as they build out their nuclear forces and go through all this procurement,” he says.
But since 2012, Mr. Xi has also used the campaign to crush opponents, eliminate rival political factions, and steadily consolidate power, to emerge today as arguably the most dominant Chinese leader since Mao. Though he has surrounded himself at the top with a coterie of hand-selected loyalists, Mr. Xi continues to wield purges as a tool to maintain control – even if it means sacking people he appointed.
“This is … a sign of [Xi’s] dominance, that even the people he’s picked for the top of the system – they’re disposable,” says Mr. Czin, a former senior analyst of Chinese politics for the U.S. intelligence community.
“This is a feature, not a bug of how he rules,” he says, designed to keep people on their toes. “He can make them – he can break them.”
A self-cleansing Communist Party?
On a more philosophical level, Mr. Xi’s purges reflect his theory of “self-revolution” – the idea that the Communist Party must renew and police itself from within. Convinced that tight, Leninist-style party control over Chinese society, the economy, and politics is the country’s best hope for his goal of national rejuvenation, Mr. Xi is betting on “self-revolution” to buttress the party’s legitimacy.
Yet one key question hangs over what this will ultimately mean for Mr. Xi’s own succession. Many China watchers believe the escalating purge could reflect Mr. Xi’s concerns that, as he gets older, more competitors will emerge to jockey for his post.
Last week’s plenum issued a communique that called on “the whole Party, the entire military, and Chinese people of all ethnic groups to rally more closely around the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core.”
While the inner workings of China’s party leadership are largely hidden from view, personnel moves will continue to be closely scrutinized with the approach of 2027 – the year Mr. Xi would seek a fourth, five-year term.
