Xi Jinping may be losing control of China's military

Telegraph

5 days ago

General He Weidong, a vice-chairman of the Communist Party's Central Military Commission and China's number two-ranked uniformed officer, was reportedly last seen in public on March 11. The general was known as a Xi Jinping loyalist in the military.
The Financial Times reports that former and current US officials believe that he has been removed from his People's Liberation Army and Party posts. There are even unverifiable rumours that the general died in May – in the PLA's 301 Hospital in Beijing – but in any event General He has evidently been sidelined, no longer able to implement Xi's orders.
Many believe that China's leader was the one who sacked the general. 'The fact that Xi Jinping can purge a CMC vice-chair shows how serious he is about stamping out corruption in the military,' Neil Thomas of the Asia Society Policy Institute told the Financial Times. 'Xi wants to turn the PLA into an effective fighting force beyond China's borders but also into a complete servant to his domestic agenda.' The FT apparently agrees with this assessment, labelling General He's treatment 'the most dramatic act of [Xi's] military anti-corruption campaign and first firing of a general in that role in six decades'.
Xi has been powerful for a long time, so it's natural that analysts and journalists ascribe every significant action in China to him. It's also true that, at one time, he had almost complete control of the military, which reports not to the Chinese state but to the Communist Party. Xi's continual 'corruption' purges, carried out throughout his rule, and his major reorganisation of the PLA, conducted in the middle of last decade, gave him the opportunity to install loyalists.
So, unsurprisingly, the Xi-is-strong narrative has persisted. Australia's ABC argues that General He may have fallen because of Xi's need to control internal politics: 'In He's case, the removal may have been less about personal wrongdoing and more about managing factional rivalry and consolidating political control.' Others have suggested that Xi has become a Stalin-like paranoid who sees enemies everywhere and so churns the ranks of senior officers.
But General He is not the only recent uniformed victim, nor the only general to have been toppled who was supposedly loyal to Xi. Also disappeared include General Li Shangfu, a defence minister, General Wei Fenghe, one of Li's predecessors, and General Miao Hua, head of personnel and ideological inspection.
'The continuation of the purges is hard to explain if Xi dominates the political system because his supporters are now being purged,' Charles Burton of the Prague-based Sinopsis think tank told me this month. 'Sometimes the simplest explanations are the most credible. The simplest explanation is that Xi's enemies – not Xi himself – removed Xi's loyalists.'
There is evidence indicating that Burton, a former Canadian diplomat in Beijing, is right. According to the Jamestown Foundation, beginning July 9 of last year PLA Daily, the Chinese military's main propaganda organ, ran a series of articles praising 'collective leadership,' a clear criticism of Xi's demand for complete obedience.
These articles – apparently written by those aligned with the number one-ranked uniformed officer, Central Military Commission Vice Chairman General Zhang Youxia – are unlikely to have appeared if Xi were in complete control of the military.
There is also evidence that Xi has lost influence among civilians. His skipping of the just-completed Brics summit in Rio de Janeiro – the first such gathering he has missed – is a clear signal that he might no longer be in control. Perhaps he is no longer permitted to travel outside China. Some point to the Politburo's establishment of new coordination 'regulations,' announced by Xi himself on June 30, as marking a formal limitation on his power.
The Chinese regime has been especially opaque this decade, so it has been even harder to read than in earlier times. Nonetheless, there are obvious signs of instability.
Is China's unstable regime more or less dangerous?
As an initial matter, strongmen like Xi rarely go quietly. If he is under threat, he may well think that he has to act against the others fast. Among other things, China triggering a war would inhibit other senior CCP leaders from trying to remove him in the midst of fighting, so he may think that provoking a conflict is in his interest.
A regime in turmoil is probably not capable of the planning and unity necessary to start large-scale military operations, such as an invasion of the main island of Taiwan. Yet it is more likely to end up in a conflict than a stable one. China has for years been provoking countries on its periphery, from South Korea in the north to Australia in the south. Additionally, Chinese planes and ships have been challenging America in the global commons in risky confrontations.
Now, China may be unable to defuse any crisis that it causes, either by accident or on purpose. Because only the most hostile responses are considered acceptable in a militarised and highly turbulent Beijing, regime figures will not be able to deal with others constructively.
A weak Xi and a Communist Party in turmoil are dangerous, and probably far more dangerous than a strong leader and a stable ruling group.