From missile command to the military hierarchy, Xi Jinping puts his own army to the test

On April 2, while Donald Trump was battering the world with tariffs, high-ranking officers of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), dressed in camouflage uniforms and armed with shovels, were digging in the earth during a voluntary reforestation day in Beijing. The activity, which has been carried out since the 1980s, included top leaders from the powerful Central Military Commission (CMC, the highest authority over the armed forces) and other Communist Party officials. Since Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, members of the military high command had never missed the event. This year was different. Those who follow the capricious twists and turns of Chinese politics immediately noticed the absence of General He Weidong, the PLA’s second-in-command.

He, who was then second vice chairman of the CMC and one of the 24 members of the Politburo, the Communist Party’s top decision-making body, last appeared in public on March 11. Shortly before, he had delivered a speech on the need to intensify the fight against corruption within the PLA. He was a close ally of Xi Jinping, who had placed him at the head of his troops three years earlier. According to the Pentagon, he played a key role in planning live-fire exercises around Taiwan after Nancy Pelosi, then Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, angered China by visiting Taipei in August 2022.

His prolonged absence from the public eye was a clear indication that something was amiss. On October 17, the Ministry of Defense announced the expulsion of He and eight other high-ranking officers from the Communist Party and the PLA, all accused of corruption. He officially became the highest-ranking general dismissed since the end of Mao Zedong’s rule in 1976. And his dismissal, along with that of the other officers, is just one more in a cascade of removals that have intensified since 2023, following a similar pattern: first, the officers disappear from public life; then, weeks or months later, the government announces a corruption investigation and expulsion from the party amid accusations of serious misconduct.

Something is stirring within the PLA, though no one knows exactly what. Several analysts point to a move by Xi Jinping to eliminate divisive factions within the armed forces, strengthen his control over the promotion system, and secure the future loyalty of the next generation of generals.

Lin Ying-Yu, an assistant professor at Tamkang University in Taiwan specializing in the capabilities of the Chinese military, supports this view. The Chinese president has sought to “reset the system” by targeting the Political Work Department of the CMC, the body responsible for overseeing the appointment of new generals. “Under the guise of combating corruption, he has aimed to destroy a group that [...] would not always be willing to follow his orders,” Lin explains by phone from Taiwan.

“What’s peculiar is that the nine disgraced military officers were high-ranking ‘tigers’ — senior generals — and that the purge spanned a wide range of military services,” writes Masaaki Yatsuzuka, a senior fellow at Japan’s National Institute for Defence Studies, in a recent article for the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. “This purge also raises questions about Xi’s control over the military,” he adds.

Many of these generals were linked to the elite 31st Army Group and were considered close to Xi, having worked with him since his days as a local leader. They were promoted after careful consideration by the president. “It is unclear whether their downfall indicates a shift in trust between Xi and the military leadership, or an increasingly fierce power struggle within the army,” Yatsuzuka acknowledges.

The initial stages of the crusade Xi launched upon assuming the presidency — a crusade that has investigated millions of officials at all levels — served to project an image of discipline and cleanse the ruling party’s reputation. During that initial phase, heavyweights of the military fell, a bastion that until then had enjoyed considerable autonomy and complex networks forged during the eras of Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao. However, the offensive has taken a new turn since Xi secured a third term: now even men he trusted are not safe. According to a Bloomberg investigation, 14 of the 79 generals promoted under his leadership have disappeared or been investigated in the last two years. To find parallels with this situation, one must go back to the 1970s.

The disciplinary offensive has climbed the military hierarchy, from strategic units to the very pinnacle of military power. The sequence of dismissals traces an upward trajectory since the abrupt removal, in the summer of 2023, of Li Yuchao and Xu Zhongbo, the two top commanders of the PLA’s Rocket Force, responsible for controlling the Asian power’s nuclear arsenal. That episode marked the beginning of an escalation that intensified in 2024 with the expulsion from the party of former Defense Minister Li Shangfu (dismissed months earlier, just six months after his appointment) and his predecessor, Wei Fenghe.

The offensive has continued in 2025, reaching an unprecedented level. He Weidong has become the first sitting vice chairman expelled from the CMC’s top leadership since the Cultural Revolution, and the third member to fall from grace since the current commission took office three years ago. The first was Li Shangfu himself, in October 2023; he was followed by Miao Hua, director of the Political Work Department, in November 2024. Considered until then an ally of the Chinese leader, Miao is another of the nine generals whose departure from the party was formalized last month.

Among the other dismissed officials are a diverse group. They range from He Hongjun, Miao’s deputy in the department specifically tasked with ensuring loyalty to the party within the military, to Wang Houbin, former commander of the Rocket Force. Meanwhile, Zhang Shengmin, head of the PLA’s disciplinary body, has replaced the dismissed He at the CMC. However, these changes have left the top of the organization with two vacancies and only two members other than the president and the two vice presidents.

The strategic nature of the Rocket Force — created in 2015 and a key unit for Xi Jinping’s military modernization — has fueled suspicions that part of the uncovered corruption network may have originated within its ranks. The concentration of procurement contracts, the management of silos and launchers, and the expansion of new bases would have provided opportunities for influence peddling and embezzlement.

Lin Ying-Yu believes that with the new structure, Xi also intends to ensure that the appointments of new generals are of loyalists, so that when he retires or leaves one of his formal positions as general secretary, president of the country, or chairman of the CMC, the military establishment will remain under his control. Xi is ultimately the supreme leader of the armed forces in a country where Mao Zedong famously declared decades ago: “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” In Professor Lin’s words, “If you control the PLA, you can control Chinese politics.”

The PLA is, first and foremost, the army of the Communist Party of China. Its military personnel swear allegiance to the party, of which they are members, and receive orders from Xi Jinping, as commander-in-chief. “The army wields weapons; it is the armed group charged with carrying out the party’s political tasks and constitutes a solid pillar for safeguarding our red regime and defending national dignity,” reads an editorial in the PLA Daily, which condemns the “vile” conduct of the nine “disloyal” generals dismissed in October. “The more it combats corruption, the stronger, purer, and more effective the PLA will be in battle,” it continues.

On Wednesday, General Zhang Youxia, the other vice chairman of the CMC, noted in an article that the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) aims to strengthen the army’s capabilities. He also pledged to take measures against “false loyalty” and “two-faced individuals,” and called for the elimination of “poisonous influences and persistent problems.”

Zhang, China’s highest-ranking general and a member of the Politburo, was the focus of news reports from that April morning when top officers in uniform went out to reforest the outskirts of Beijing. “After more than an hour of hard work, they planted more than 800 trees,” Xinhua reported. The article made no mention of the missing He.

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