Xi Jinping's Military Purge: Organizational Decapitation of the PLA Leadership and Reconstruction of Combat Readiness

On January 24, 2026, the Chinese Ministry of Defense issued an announcement that shook the global defense community: Zhang Youxia, Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission, and Liu Zhenli, Chief of the Joint Staff, are under investigation for serious disciplinary violations and illegal activities. This announcement marks a new peak in Xi Jinping's unprecedented purge of the leadership of the People's Liberation Army (PLA). The latest report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), titled "2026 China Military Purge Database," shows that this purge, which began in 2022, has resulted in over 100 senior PLA officers being dismissed or going missing, with its scale and depth being unprecedented since the establishment of the Communist Party of China.

The downfall of Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli is by no means an isolated incident. The Central Military Commission, China's highest military decision-making body, has undergone an organizational "decapitation": of the seven members elected to the Commission at the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party in 2022, only Xi Jinping himself and Zhang Shengmin, the political commissar responsible for discipline inspection and supervision, remain. Former Vice Chairman He Weidong, former Director of the Political Work Department Miao Hua, and former Minister of Defense Li Shangfu, among others, have been purged. CSIS's detailed analysis shows that of the 176 key leadership positions in the PLA, approximately 101 officers who previously held these positions have been dismissed or gone missing, affecting about 52% of the PLA's leadership roles.

Such a scale of personnel upheaval poses a substantial impact on the PLA's short-term combat readiness, particularly evident in the Taiwan Strait. The Eastern Theater Command, as the core military force addressing Taiwan affairs, experienced a vacancy in the commander position for nine months from March to December 2025. This personnel gap has had observable negative effects on the quality of the PLA's military exercises concerning Taiwan. The "Strait Thunder-2025A" exercise held in April 2025 took 19 days to initiate, whereas a similar exercise in 2024 only required 3-4 days. More critically, this exercise was characterized as a "drill" rather than an "exercise," with a noticeable reduction in scale and complexity; the publicity for the exercise was also rushed, with the name announced only the next day, and the press release was unusually brief, lacking the usual political purpose description.

However, the impact of this purge on the PLA presents a complex paradox. The large-scale vacuum in leadership will indeed delay Xi Jinping's "2027 Military Centenary" readiness goal for the PLA, but China's military modernization hardware construction has not stalled due to personnel upheaval. Chengdu Aircraft Industry Group has accelerated the production and delivery of the J-20 stealth fighter by implementing a pulse assembly production line. The Shenyang Aircraft Industry Group's J-35 stealth fighter is also accelerating its service entry, and China has even begun promoting it internationally as an alternative to the F-35. In the missile domain, the DF-17 hypersonic glide vehicle (with speeds between 5-10 Mach and a range of 1,800-2,500 kilometers) and the YJ-20 anti-ship hypersonic missile, officially unveiled in September 2025, demonstrate China's continued progress in precision strike weapon systems.

From a long-term perspective, this purge may bring a new generation of leadership to the PLA that is more professional and politically reliable. The officers purged by Xi Jinping largely grew up in an environment where corruption deepened and the military had relative autonomy. Their successors will be a generation with higher education levels and stronger technical skills, who are also more aligned with the narrative that "the United States and its military power are in decline." These newly appointed officers have undergone stricter political scrutiny, and their loyalty to Xi Jinping may exceed that of the older generation of leaders. By the late 2020s and early 2030s, when these new leaders have accumulated enough experience, they may possess greater confidence and capability to push for assertive actions against regional adversaries.

The historical context of this purge is noteworthy. From the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989 to 1992, the PLA leadership also experienced a similar scale of personnel changes. However, Xi Jinping's current purge is more in-depth at the deputy theater command and departmental levels, indicating that he aims not only to dismantle networks of relationships but also to ensure the PLA's absolute obedience to the Party's leadership in the face of internal turmoil.

This purge reveals the core contradiction in China's defense strategy: a military organization that is rapidly enhancing its hardware capabilities while simultaneously undergoing a drastic restructuring of its command system and decision-making mechanisms. For both sides of the Taiwan Strait, as well as the United States and its allies, this represents both a short-term strategic opportunity window and a potential long-term strategic challenge. When the new generation of PLA leadership, shaped by this purge, is fully in place, they will command a military equipped with more advanced technology, organized more tightly, but with a higher degree of obedience to Xi Jinping's personal will—this military may lack the necessary professional checks and rational counsel when executing high-risk military operations. The ultimate resolution of this contradiction will largely determine the strategic landscape of the Asia-Pacific region over the next decade.