Alongside the promotion of Xi’s key aides — Li Zhanshu and Zhao Leji — to the CCP Politburo Standing Committee, a cohort of new civilian leaders associated with Xi also gained membership to the Politburo.
Xi’s pre-eminent status in Chinese politics is not confined to the structures of government. By reducing the number of uniformed members in the Central Military Commission (CMC) — the body responsible for running the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) — from 10 to six, Xi has further boosted his politico-military clout.
The new CMC membership is stacked with Xi’s favoured generals. While the two CMC deputies — Xu Qiliang and Zhang Youxia — share a long history with Xi, the remaining members either served in the former Nanjing Military Region, which encompassed Xi’s former Fujian and Zhejiang strongholds, or have been groomed for higher office since Xi assumed the CMC leadership.
The career path of Xu Qiliang — the CMC first vice-chair — crossed with Xi’s when the former PLA Air Force (PLAAF) commander was based in the 8th Corps in Fuzhou. A trusted general of Xi, Xu was promoted to executive deputy leader of the Leading Group for National Defence and Military Reform despite ranking below the then CMC first vice-chairman, Fan Changlong.
In appointing Xu as China’s top soldier, Xi has underscored his desire for the PLA to shift from being a predominantly land-based power to a more modern ‘joint’ military force.
The second-ranked Zhang Youxia shares close family ties with Xi, as their fathers were comrades-in-arms during the Chinese Civil War. An experienced and influential army officer, Zhang is believed to have been a key supporter of Xi’s efforts to dismantle and reorganise the PLA’s former general headquarters, military regions and service branches.
As the former director in charge of military hardware, Zhang can be expected to play an increasingly important role in the PLA as China attempts to improve its information warfare capabilities.
As the first officer to be promoted by Xi to the rank of general, Wei Fenghe — who oversaw China’s nuclear arsenal as chief of the PLA Rocket Force — is expected to improve the PLA’s combat readiness. Wei has also been tipped to become China’s defence minister next year.
Another younger general, Miao Hua — a political commissar who rose from the 31st Group Army in the former Nanjing Military Region — stands poised to tighten the CCP’s political control over the PLA.
Given how former political officers had failed in their duties to uphold the Party’s ideological guidelines, Miao’s role in strengthening CCP control over PLA organisational cohesion and personnel management will be especially crucial to Xi.
Li Zuocheng’s inclusion is in keeping with Xi’s calls for the PLA to become a modern military by 2035 and a world-class force by 2050. Appointed the head of the Joint Staff Department just prior to the recent congress, and as one of two CMC members with combat experience (the other being Zhang Youxia), Li is an ideal candidate to enhance PLA professionalism.
The elevation of Zhang Shengmin to the grade of CMC member will also empower the discipline and inspection functions of the CMC as the military deepens its anti-graft drive.
While some pundits have questioned Xi’s ability to assert civilian control over the PLA — with one analysis speculating that the recent China–India standoff in Doklam was the result of willful disobedience on the part of a former CMC member — the CCP’s civilian oversight of the PLA in the post-reform era has never looked stronger.
Since becoming CMC chairman, Xi has assiduously worked to harness the PLA as his personal powerbase by emphasising the ‘CMC Chairman Responsibility System’. The trimming of the CMC follows his previous criticism that certain military elites (prior to the recent PLA reforms) had ‘accumulated too much power, gained too much autonomy and affected the CMC’s unified leadership’.
Just as Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping had owed their political longevity to absolute authority over the Party’s armed servants, Xi — via a combination of psychological intimidation and institutional mechanisms, embodied respectively in his signature anti-corruption campaign and unprecedented military reforms — appears to have won the PLA’s backing to dominate China’s political landscape for the foreseeable future.
In China, then as it is now, whoever commands the PLA controls the CCP.
James Char is an Associate Research Fellow with the China Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. Along with Richard A. Bitzinger, he is the editor of A New Direction in the People’s Liberation Army’s Emergent Strategic Thinking, Roles and Missions (The China Quarterly).
A version of this article was originally published here on RSIS.