China’s widening purge of senior military leaders is no longer a matter of corruption control or routine political discipline. It has become a defining feature of Xi Jinping’s approach to power at a moment of mounting strategic uncertainty, and it carries profound implications for China’s military effectiveness, civil military relations, and regional stability. What is unfolding inside the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is not simply a clean-up operation. It is a restructuring of authority driven by distrust, anxiety, and a deepening fear that the armed forces may not be fully dependable in a crisis.
The most recent and consequential development came with the removal of General Zhang Youxia, vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission and one of the highest-ranking uniformed officers in China. Zhang was not a marginal figure. As the second most powerful officer in the PLA and a longtime associate of Xi, his sudden investigation shattered assumptions about the inner circle of military leadership. His fall followed the earlier removal of General He Weidong, also a vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission, who had been responsible for operational planning and joint command oversight. With both vice-chairmen sidelined, the supreme military body that oversees China’s armed forces has been left visibly hollowed out.
As a result of successive removals and investigations, the effective leadership of the Central Military Commission has contracted from seven members to an unprecedented three. Xi remains as chairman, exercising direct personal control. He is joined by one remaining uniformed officer, General Liu Zhenli, whose experience is largely rooted in internal command structures and planning roles rather than extended joint force leadership or combat operations. The third remaining member is a senior political officer drawn from the party’s disciplinary and organizational apparatus rather than the professional military, leaving the apex of China’s armed forces dominated by political authority rather than operational depth.
These cases do not stand alone. Since 2023, at least two Chinese defence ministers have been removed from office. Li Shangfu, appointed in early 2023, disappeared from public view within months and was later formally dismissed. His predecessor, Wei Fenghe, was subsequently expelled from the Communist Party as well. Both men had overseen critical periods of military modernization and procurement. Their removals were followed by a wave of investigations across the Rocket Force, the Strategic Support Force, and the defence industrial base, particularly in aerospace and missile production. By conservative counts—drawn from open-source reporting and corroborated by the Wall Street Journal—more than fifty senior generals, admirals, and defence industry executives have been removed, investigated, or disappeared from public roles over the past two years.
The scale and pattern of these purges matter more than the individual allegations. Anti-corruption campaigns are not new in China, but this one is distinct in its focus on operational command, strategic weapons forces, and the institutions responsible for nuclear deterrence and long-range strike. The Rocket Force has been hit hard, with multiple commanders and political commissars removed. This is the arm of the PLA tasked with managing China’s most sensitive capabilities. When leadership in such units is systematically purged, it raises unavoidable questions about institutional trust and command reliability. The concentration of the purge within the Rocket Force and strategic command structures also carries deterrence implications, as sustained leadership instability inside the institutions responsible for nuclear forces and long-range strike raises quiet but consequential questions about command confidence, escalation control, and the credibility of China’s second-strike posture in a crisis.
For Washington’s regional allies, particularly Japan, South Korea, Australia, and other Indo-Pacific partners, the purge complicates deterrence planning by introducing uncertainty about how Chinese military decisions are made in a crisis, how reliably signals are transmitted up and down the chain of command, and whether escalation dynamics would be governed by professional judgment or political calculation. For Canada, the implications are particularly acute. Under Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government, Ottawa’s recent approach to re-engagement with Beijing risks colliding with a reality in which China’s military leadership is increasingly politicized, opaque, and inwardly unstable. This raises questions about the strategic assumptions underpinning any renewed confidence in bilateral engagement.
For Xi, the logic appears clear even if the consequences are not. The Chinese Communist Party has always insisted that the PLA must remain absolutely loyal to the party. Yet as China’s military has grown larger, more professional, and more technologically complex, it has also become harder to control through ideology alone. The purge reflects a belief that political loyalty must be reasserted before any major strategic test, particularly as tensions over Taiwan intensify and China faces a more coordinated set of external pressures.
The problem for China is that political purification carries operational costs. Militaries function on trust, initiative, and honest assessment. When senior officers see peers removed at the highest levels, caution replaces candor. Commanders become less willing to surface inconvenient truths or challenge flawed assumptions. Decisions are slow as officers seek political cover rather than military advantage. Over time, this erodes readiness in precisely the scenarios that demand speed, flexibility, and decentralized execution.
This dynamic is especially concerning in the context of a Taiwan contingency. Amphibious operations, joint air and naval campaigns, and escalation management across multiple domains require experienced leadership empowered to adapt under pressure. A PLA shaped by fear of political missteps is not well suited to such complexity. While China’s military hardware continues to improve, hardware alone does not win wars. Leadership culture matters, and the current purge is reshaping that culture in ways that privilege obedience over competence.
Regionally, the implications are paradoxical and potentially destabilizing. A PLA distracted by internal politics may be less capable of executing sustained large-scale operations. At the same time, an insecure leadership may be more inclined toward coercive measures, gray-zone activity, and demonstrations of resolve designed to reinforce domestic authority and test external reactions. Increased air and naval pressure around Taiwan, more assertive behavior in the South China Sea, and sharper rhetoric toward U.S. allies could all serve internal political purposes even as they raise the risk of miscalculation.
There is also a communication problem in that military-to-military dialogue relies on stable interlocutors who possess authority and continuity. As senior Chinese officers disappear or are replaced, channels that were intended to reduce risk and manage crises become less dependable. The U.S. and its allies may find themselves engaging with counterparts who are newly appointed, politically cautious, and uncertain of their own standing. This weakens crisis management at a time when operational encounters are becoming more frequent.
The broader message sent by the purge is one of anxiety rather than confidence. Strong systems do not need to repeatedly cleanse their leadership at the highest levels. They invest in professional norms and institutional resilience. China’s leadership, by contrast, appears to be compensating for uncertainty by seeking increased control through continued centralization, tighter ideological oversight, and a narrower circle of trusted commanders. New appointments will certainly emphasize political reliability first and operational experience second. The PLA will remain formidable on paper and in parades, but its internal culture will be shaped by caution and conformity.
For regional actors and Western planners, the lesson is not complacency but clarity. An anxious China is not necessarily a restrained one. The risk environment is defined less by deliberate aggression than by misjudgment, poor communication, and leadership incentives distorted by internal politics. Deterrence, intelligence sharing, and alliance cohesion matter more, not less, in such an environment. The purge of China’s generals is about power, not corruption. It reflects a leadership preparing for uncertainty by tightening its grip on the instruments of force.
Whether that grip strengthens China’s security or undermines it will depend on whether loyalty can substitute for trust and whether political control can replace professional competence. The deeper danger is that the purge is accelerating the politicization of the PLA at the expense of professional military norms, complicating military-to-military engagement by reducing the space for candid dialogue, reliable messaging, and crisis de-escalation at precisely the moment such channels are most needed. History suggests that such substitutions rarely end well.
Joe Varner is the deputy director of the Conference of Defence Associations, and a senior fellow of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute in Ottawa and the Center for North American Prosperity and Security in Washington, D.C.
