HONG KONG: As well as splashing out ever-increasing amounts of cash on the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), Chairman Xi Jinping is hauling on its reins to keep China’s military -which has a history of doing things its own way – in check. However, even after more than twelve years in control, his efforts are proving only partially successful.
On 5 March, China announced its defense budget for 2025. The sum of CNY1.784665 trillion – or USD249 billion – rose 7.2% compared to the year before. China’s defense expenditure has been pegged to single-digit percentage increases for the past decade.
As much as rising funds are welcome to the PLA, Xi is more concerned about the rot of corruption and the PLA’s political loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Joel Wuthnow, Senior Research Fellow at the USA’s National Defense University, assessed: “Xi Jinping still looms large in the PLA, but his power is finite.” Yes, there have been results “in terms of greater confidence in regional disputes, new capabilities and stronger preparations for war against Taiwan and the United States,” but Wuthnow believes “Xi’s success in cleaning up the PLA has been partial at best”.
Wuthnow added: “While the purges indicate that Xi was eventually able to uncover and correct problems that might have previously gone unnoticed, the fact that they occurred more than a decade into his tenure and implicated his own appointees signaled that the system remained flawed: senior leaders were not intimidated, control mechanisms did not prevent scandals from affecting key departments…”
Xi’s perceptions of the parlous state of the PLA’s obedience were evident at the Two Sessions of the National People’s Congress (NPC) held in Beijing from 5-10 March. Xi attended an associated plenary meeting of the PLA and People’s Armed Police (PAP), as he has done every year since 2013, but the 2025 edition was notable for a couple of reasons.
This time, Xi discussed for the first time the major round of criminal investigations that occurred in July 2023, which resulted in many PLA and defense industry figureheads being dismissed. Furthermore, fewer PLA and PAP delegates attended the meeting this year. The military delegation numbered 267, which was 14 fewer than the 281 members appointed in 2023. This is because they were stood down because of corruption, or what the CCP calls “discipline violations”.
Ten were removed before 2024’s Two Sessions, while four more had bitten the dust since then. These included: former defense minister Li Shangfu, former PLA deputy commander Deng Zhiping, the latter’s predecessor You Haitao, and Li Pengcheng, former naval commander in the Southern Theater Command.
The military delegation has suffered more severe attrition than any other provincial, industry or government segment at the Two Sessions. It compares unfavorably with the overall 1.8% rate of NPC members appointed in 2023 who have now been sacked. Furthermore, this ratio of 5% of toppled military delegates will definitely grow larger, for Miao Hua’s demise has not been formally announced yet. Others to have recently disappeared from public view are Li Qiaoming, commander of the PLA ground force; Wang Chunning, commander of the PAP; and Yuan Huazhi, the PLA Navy’s political commissar.
The diminishing size of the delegation underscores the emphasis Xi places upon “cleansing” the PLA, as his long-term anti-graft campaign weeds out those unfit for service.
This plenary session, according to a government press release, discussed how to enhance military efficiency, strengthen cross-unit coordination, improve the management system and further develop military-civil fusion. K. Tristan Tang, a research associate at the Research Project on China’s Defense Affairs, noted thus: “While this is a common topic for Xi’s speeches, the degree of focus it received and the level of urgency with which Xi delivered his message were not. This suggests that Xi’s efforts to reform the military system still face stubborn challenges that thus far he has failed to resolve.”
Writing in an article for The Jamestown Foundation think-tank in the USA, Tang said that this year there were strong similarities with Xi’s speech in 2019. He identified recurring phrases such as cross-departmental, cross-disciplinary, cross-military-civilian, bottlenecks, funding, auditing and corruption. “These all indicate that Xi wants to prioritize the integration of the military and civilian domains to simultaneously advance military modernization, while increasing efficiency and reducing corruption.”
However, Xi’s 2025 speech contained a lot more urgency. If he is still largely urging the same things, this indicates Xi has not made significant headway in the past six years. He warned that bottlenecks and obstacles need to be resolved, mimicking what Xi said in his 2019 presentation. Tang highlighted one reason why policy coordination is so difficult in communist China. “This is in part due to the tiaokuai system in which authority extends vertically and horizontally at every level of government, and each group has its own interests and obligations.
Xi’s push for an ‘integrated national strategic system and capabilities’ aims to break down these barriers.” Xi called for modern management concepts and methods to help enhance systematization and coherence in the overhaul. Tang added, “A responsibility system, along with appropriate supervision, is also key to encouraging large-scale, cross-unit and cross-regional policies. This is especially true given the inefficiencies of the tiaokuai system and endemic corruption in the military.” Xi exhorted officials to double down on supervision so that corruption and malpractice can be rooted out.
Tang explained, “This speaks to Xi’s overriding concern regarding corruption. While such malfeasance may indicate a lack of loyalty and attendant loss of power and stability for Xi, the negative impact corruption has on military modernization is at least as big a concern.” The Chinese leader reiterated the need for frugality, improving fund usage, cost-effectiveness and scientifically allocating national defense resources.
Another difference in this year’s military plenary meeting was that the complete process of military development – from research and development through to frontline capability – was highlighted. This was exemplified by the roster of presenters: Li Dong, political commissar of the School of System Engineering at the National University of Defense Technology; Feng Yan, representative of the Logistics Support
Department; Liu Shuwei, commander of the PLA Air Force’s 95861 weapons and tactics testing unit; Cui Daohu, an engineer sergeant in the PLA Rocket Force; Zhou Gang, chief engineer of the PLA’s 63650 technical research unit; and Zheng Yuanlin, deputy commander of the PLA Air Force.
Such a line-up eclipsed anything a plenary session had previously gathered. Furthermore, their range of military ranks provided a sharp departure compared to preceding plenary sessions. Back in 2019, speakers were high-ranking officials, but fast forward to 2025 and most were frontline personnel.
Parsing this change of presenters, Tang remarked, “This shift suggests that Xi may be suspicious of information provided by the upper echelons of the military. This may be because previous information has been incomplete or biased – a speculative interpretation, but one that accords with analysis Xi has become less trusting of information submitted to him by those at the top of the military.” Perhaps by bypassing sycophantic or self-serving upper cadres, Xi can listen directly to those involved in the nuts and bolts of military development and thus gain a more accurate picture.Tang concluded: “Intractable problems in the PRC system tend to be caused by stubborn vested interests and protectionism. This appears to be the case for the military-industrial sector and related military equipment departments, and would explain Xi’s difficulties in implementing his desired reforms.”
However, the analyst also assessed, “Xi’s reforms will not necessarily be more successful than those announced in 2019. At the Two Sessions meeting in 2023, Xi also declared the need to promote the development of the ‘integrated national strategic system and capabilities’. However, within a few months, numerous PLA generals and senior officials in the military-industrial sector were investigated or removed from their positions.” This even included Rao Wenmin of the Equipment Development Department, who had spoken at that very meeting!
“The crucial question in 2025 is whether Xi has been able to break entrenched practices and networks within the PLA and the military-industrial sector. If not, barriers to improving coordination, military-civil fusion and efficiency are likely to persist, as is the ongoing anti-corruption drive,” Tang concluded.
Many of the same sentiments were reflected in Premier Li Qiang’s government work report delivered at the Two Sessions. Lyle Morris, Senior Fellow for Foreign Policy and National Security at the Asia Society Policy Institute, noted, “First, and perhaps most noteworthy, was Li’s dire assessment of the global security landscape. He began with ‘changes unseen in a century are unfolding across the world at a faster pace,’ a phrase frequently used during Xi Jinping’s meetings with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin. Li further judges that China faces ‘an increasingly complex and severe external environment’ that ‘may exert a greater impact on China in areas such as trade, science and technology.'”
“Second, on national defense, Li repeats, almost verbatim, language from the 2024 report on the need to enhance China’s new combat capabilities to meet Xi’s 2027 centenary modernization goal for the PLA. Two new phrases in this year’s report are noteworthy. First, he calls for the PLA to ‘establish a framework of modern military theories with Chinese characteristics’; and second, he highlights the need to ‘move faster to develop the network information system.'”
The first phrase referring to theories is a proposal for China to carve out a distinct contribution to military theory internationally. Xi is encouraging Chinese military strategists to mark their mark by contributing novel military doctrines consistent with Chinese heritage and that diverge from Western theories. The second phrase relating to a “network information system” urged the PLA to better integrate information technology into its training and military modernization goals.
This is part of the ongoing “intelligentization” effort by the PLA. Morris continued, “Third, Li’s language about Taiwan did not include any shifts in Beijing’s policy toward Taipei. It repeated the CCP’s ‘overall policy for the new era on resolving the Taiwan question,’ including ‘staying committed to the one-China principle and the 1992 Consensus’ and that China ‘resolutely opposes separatist activities aimed at ‘Taiwan independence’ and external interference to promote the peaceful development of cross-strait relations.”
In a press conference on 7 March, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi was relatively fiery in pushing back against President Donald Trump’s policies. Amidst the chaos Trump is inducing worldwide, Wang cast China as a “source of stability” to “anchor the world”. The foreign minister also said, “No country should expect to suppress and contain China on one hand, while developing a good relationship with it on the other.
Such a two-faced approach not only undermines the stability of bilateral relations, but also fails to build mutual trust.”
Returning to the issue of Xi’s incomplete control over the PLA, Wuthnow highlighted three implications. “First is the possibility, but not the certainty, of diminished readiness due to corruption.” Next “is a continued lack of trust between Xi and the PLA,” particularly low levels of civil-military trust. The third implication, according to Wuthnow, is that “further complications might be in store for Xi and his successor”.
As civilian leaders, they cannot fully exert control over the PLA, and this will have an ongoing impact.
Wuthnow contended that all Chinese leaders, including Xi, have been historically bedeviled by PLA top brass pursuing their own agendas. “Nothing Xi has done to control the bureaucracy, including purging and rotating officers, handpicking trusted agents or reforming control mechanisms, has resolved this problem. Xi can only go so far in coercing the bureaucracy before he reaches a tipping point, and he has judiciously refrained from stepping close to the edge.” The American academic concluded, “The result, however, is that he cannot be fully confident in what the PLA tells him about its state of readiness or internal deficiencies, whether created by corruption, poor or ineffective leadership, or advantages of foreign adversaries. Such uncertainties might well impact his confidence in ordering the PLA into battle.”
One hopes this is the case, as China continues to browbeat Taiwan. (ANI)
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