The Great Purge of the PLA High Command in Early 2026: The Paradox of Political Centralization and Military Modernization

In late January 2026, the Chinese Ministry of Defense announced an investigation into General Zhang Youxia, Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission, and General Liu Zhenli, Chief of the Joint Staff, on the grounds of "serious violations of discipline and law." This news immediately caused a stir in the international defense community—Zhang Youxia is seen as one of Xi Jinping's most core allies within the military, while Liu Zhenli directly oversees operational command and coordination functions. This marks the highest-ranking officer investigated in the anti-corruption campaign against the People's Liberation Army (PLA) since Xi came to power in 2012.

Reuters pointed out in its report that this investigation leaves only one of the seven members of the Central Military Commission "effectively in position," aside from Xi Jinping himself. Although the vacancies may soon be filled, this period of vacuum is already symbolically significant: it indicates that the current campaign logic allows for strikes against individuals who were considered pillars of the system until recently. This reinforces the personalization of power while weakening the role of "collective leadership" in the military sphere. The Associated Press described this situation as the Central Military Commission being in a state of "paralysis." While this characterization may be somewhat exaggerated, it does reveal the trust crisis currently facing the upper echelons of the military.

This round of purges is not an isolated incident. As early as 2023, the PLA Rocket Force experienced significant personnel upheaval, with Commander Li Yuchao and several of his deputies dismissed and investigated. The Rocket Force is responsible for China's strategic missile capabilities, one of the most sensitive components of the national defense system. When the purges extended to the missile units, the issues at hand were no longer just about financial flows but involved trust in the management of key pillars of national defense. In October 2025, Reuters reported that two senior generals were expelled from the Party and military due to corruption allegations, followed by the promotion of a key figure in the disciplinary inspection system, Zhang Shengmin, to the military's "number two" position. This reveals the structure of the entire campaign: the old network is dismantled while the disciplinary inspection agency is simultaneously strengthened as a tool of political control.

However, alongside this unprecedented personnel purge, China's military forces exhibited remarkable activity in 2025. According to data from Taiwan's Ministry of National Defense, the PLA conducted 3,764 air incursions into Taiwan's air defense identification zone in 2025, a 22.4% increase from 2024, setting a historical record. In the South China Sea, reports from the China Maritime Safety Administration indicated that the PLA engaged in 163 different military activities in 2025, including live-fire exercises, training, and military operations, with live-fire activities reaching 55 times, a new high compared to 47 times in 2024. Around Japan, PLA naval vessels conducted at least 111 voyages, a slight increase from 108 times in 2024.

Even more noteworthy is the long-range activity of the PLA aircraft carrier battle groups. In May 2025, the Liaoning and its escort fleet sailed southwest of Japan's Minami-Torishima, marking the first time a Chinese aircraft carrier ventured beyond the second island chain. Subsequently, in June, the Liaoning and Shandong simultaneously conducted operations outside the first island chain in the Western Pacific, marking China's first dual-carrier deployment at sea. According to data from Japan's Ministry of Defense, the two aircraft carriers operated a total of 58 days outside the first island chain in 2025, nearly double the 32 days in 2024. Chinese state media reported that the Liaoning alone sailed 30,000 nautical miles in 2024, with its takeoff and landing counts in 2024 and 2025 exceeding the total of the previous four years.

This creates a significant paradox: how can a military system undergoing a large-scale purge at the top maintain or even expand the scale and complexity of its operational activities? The U.S. Department of Defense's 2025 annual report on China's military provides part of the answer—despite the turmoil at the top, China's military modernization and major procurement plans appear to be unaffected. China's defense budget maintained a growth rate of 7.2% for three consecutive years in 2023, 2024, and 2025, reaching 1.78 trillion yuan (approximately $249 billion) in 2025. More strategically significant is the U.S. Department of Defense's assessment that China plans to build six more aircraft carriers by 2035, which would give it a total of nine carriers—making China the second-largest aircraft carrier nation in the world, after the United States.

The PLA Air Force is also steadily phasing out second- and third-generation fighter jets, replacing them with fifth-generation stealth fighters like the J-20 and advanced 4.5-generation aircraft. The Strategic Support Force's activities in cyberspace and space show no signs of weakening. Despite the purges in 2023, the Rocket Force successfully executed live-fire strikes in the waters surrounding Taiwan during the "Mission of Justice-2025" exercise at the end of 2025 and conducted simulated missile strike drills. In other words, despite the intense personnel upheaval, the PLA's combat capabilities and modernization processes have maintained continuity at the technical level.

This apparent contradiction actually reflects the simultaneous operation of two different levels of logic. At the political level, Xi Jinping is reshaping the power structure of the PLA through the anti-corruption campaign, transforming it from an institution with limited autonomy into an extension of the Central Committee of the Communist Party—specifically, of himself. The core purpose of this transformation is not to undermine the military's combat capabilities but to ensure that these capabilities are fully subordinate to political will. The strengthening of the disciplinary inspection system, the replacement of senior generals, and the repeated emphasis on "absolute loyalty" all point to a single goal: to eliminate any possibility of alternative political actors emerging within the PLA.

At the operational level, the PLA's daily training, exercises, and modernization processes follow established technical and organizational logics. The research and deployment of new equipment, the normalization of long-range training, and the enhancement of joint operational capabilities do not require the personal charisma or creative decision-making of senior leaders; rather, they rely on the continuous operation of the military-industrial system, military academies, mid- and lower-level officer corps, and technical bureaucratic systems. As long as funding continues to be invested, technical routes are clear, and organizational processes are stable, modernization at this level can largely sustain itself.

However, this dual-track system is not without cost. In the short term, large-scale purges may lead to "initiative freeze"—officers and defense managers tend to choose safe paths, avoiding unconventional decisions that could trigger political risks, with responsibility being pushed up the chain. This has limited impact during peacetime or routine exercises, but in crisis situations requiring rapid decision-making and battlefield initiative, it could lead to fatal delays. A deeper risk is that as a military system increasingly relies on the personnel appointment logic of a single political center, it loses mechanisms for collective deliberation and distributed responsibility, resulting in decreased system resilience.

Taiwan's Minister of National Defense is acutely aware of this. In response to the changes in the PLA's upper echelons, he publicly stated that these changes are "abnormal," but the threat level remains, and Taiwan's defense preparations cannot be lowered. This statement reflects the duality of the paradox: personnel upheaval may temporarily reduce the efficiency of large-scale operations, but Beijing's political logic may instead drive more demonstrative military activities to offset external perceptions of internal instability and reaffirm control.

Looking ahead to the next 12 to 18 months, three key indicators are worth monitoring: the speed and background of filling key positions in the Central Military Commission; whether pressure on defense enterprises and the procurement chain continues; and changes in the intensity of military activities around the Taiwan Strait amid leadership turmoil. If China chooses to stabilize quickly and demonstrate a restoration of management structure, the political effects of the purges will be limited to internal matters. If the investigation continues to expand and delve into the defense industry, external observers may conclude that internal control takes precedence over the speed of modernization. Conversely, if personnel appointments increasingly rely on the disciplinary inspection system and personal loyalty, the PLA will become more politically reliable, but operational flexibility may decrease, which could increase the risk of misjudgment in crises.

Ultimately, the PLA's high-level purge in early 2026 is neither a sign of imminent collapse nor a prelude to an inevitable coup. It is a symptom of a profound structural transformation in which China is consciously sacrificing some institutional flexibility in exchange for maximum political control. This model can operate effectively in the short term, but in the long run, it creates risks associated with overestimating central capabilities and underestimating the complexities of modern warfare—in modern warfare, the importance of decisiveness lies not only in technology and budget but also in the quality of command. Therefore, this current round of purges is less about a story of corruption and more about what kind of country China is becoming under Xi Jinping's era: more centralized, more personalized, and simultaneously more susceptible to its own internal contradictions.