BEIJING — Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign has carved into the top ranks of the People’s Liberation Army, leaving China’s senior military command thinner and more unsettled as Beijing emerges from its annual political meetings, March 18, 2026. What began as a corruption cleanup in procurement and the Rocket Force has now reached the core of the Central Military Commission, raising new questions about wartime decision-making, internal trust and how a more politically policed force performs under pressure.
The sharpest break came in January, when China’s Defense Ministry said CMC vice chairman Zhang Youxia and Joint Staff Department chief Liu Zhenli were under investigation for suspected serious violations of discipline and law, according to Reuters’ report on the probe into Zhang and Liu. Zhang had long been seen as Xi’s closest military ally, making the case the most consequential shake-up yet inside the PLA’s top command.
Why the China military purge now matters for PLA readiness
The damage is no longer just reputational. An International Institute for Strategic Studies assessment, summarized in Reuters’ report on how the purge is hurting command and readiness, said the campaign has created serious deficiencies in the chain of command and likely hampered readiness, even if its authors expect the disruption to prove temporary. That same reporting said the normally seven-member CMC has effectively been reduced to Xi and newly promoted vice chairman Zhang Shengmin.
That matters because the purge is colliding with Xi’s own accelerated military timetable. U.S. officials cited in Reuters’ look at the purge’s implications for Taiwan and war planning said Xi has told the PLA to be ready by or in 2027 for a Taiwan contingency, while also stressing that such a deadline is not the same as an order to invade. A force under constant internal scrutiny can still modernize, but it may do so with weaker trust, slower promotion pipelines and a more cautious officer corps.
The campaign was still widening ahead of this month’s National People’s Congress. China’s legislature removed 19 deputies, including nine military officers, in a late-February move reported by The Associated Press before the annual session opened. On March 7, Xi told military delegates there must be no place in the armed forces for corrupt or disloyal officials, according to Xinhua’s account of his latest military loyalty speech.
Beijing’s public message is that the cleanup is making the PLA more reliable, not less. But the longer the vacancies and investigations continue, the harder it becomes to separate political control from operational cost. For foreign militaries watching China, the real question is whether Xi is building a cleaner command structure or a more brittle one.
The China military purge did not begin this year
The current wave follows a longer arc that has steadily climbed the chain of command. In late 2023, a Reuters report on the Rocket Force upheaval described how the crackdown had already exposed unusual weakness inside the branch tied to China’s nuclear deterrent and highlighted the shock of senior-level vetting failures.
The campaign broadened further in 2024, when the Communist Party expelled former defense ministers Li Shangfu and Wei Fenghe, as detailed in Reuters’ June 2024 report on the two ex-defense ministers. It then reached even higher in 2025, when vice chairman He Weidong and former top political officer Miao Hua were expelled from the party and the military, according to Reuters’ October 2025 report on the purge of two top generals.
Seen together, those episodes suggest Xi’s drive has moved from procurement scandals and individual disgrace cases into a broader test of loyalty, discipline and control across the PLA. The crackdown may yet deliver a tighter command culture, but for now it has also left one of the world’s largest militaries trying to modernize while repeatedly cutting into its own senior leadership.
