- China's Xi stressed the primacy of the Communist Party over the military in a recent speech.
- An account of his speech may aim to show that Xi is in firm control despite recent purges.
China's military is loyal and will faithfully execute the policies set down by the Communist Party. Or, at least that's what China is trying to convince the world.
In June, Chinese Leader Xi Jinping reminded the Central Military Commission — the country's top political-military body — that the military reports to the Communist Party. "Xi emphasized the need to uphold the Party's absolute leadership over the military and to build a high-quality cadre team that is loyal, clean, responsible, and capable of fulfilling the mission of strengthening the military," reported the state-controlled Global Times newspaper.
"Xi stressed that political work is always the lifeline of the country's military. The armed forces must always be led by those who are reliable and loyal to the Party, and there must be no place for corruption within the military," per Global Times, which often serves as a mouthpiece for China's hawks.
Xi's reminder comes after purges that have resulted in several senior People's Liberation Army officers being removed or jailed for corruption. But with China trying to project an image of military might, anything that hints of a split between the politicians and the generals is worrying.
"If I were Xi, I would be concerned about the perception that massive shakeups of the PLA may have led to the outside, particularly Western world, thinking that I am vulnerable and there is dissension between the PLA and the Party," Shanshan Mei, a political scientist at the RAND Corp., a US think tank, told Business Insider.
For years, Xi has been expressing concerns about China's military, his showpiece for the nationalism he's stirred in his unprecedented third term and his most kinetic instrument for seizing Taiwan, confronting the US and projecting Chinese power abroad. But for more than a decade, the PLA has been shaken by corruption scandals as he'd tried to rein in the corrupt businesses run by many officers, from bribes paid to top officers for promotions, to rocket fuel that turned out to be ordinary water. Most recently, the commander and the political commissar of the elite PLA Rocket Force — which controls nuclear missiles — were replaced by officers from other military branches.
Do Xi's latest warnings reflect a lack of faith in his military, or the prelude to more purges? "We don't know," Mei said. "Xi has doubts and he's been explicit about if his commanders at all levels are capable enough to command and lead for a very long time."
However, Mei pointed out that the article on Xi's speech in Global Times, which is an English-language publication, is different than what appears in official Chinese-language media. "Xi stresses PLA's political loyalty at crucial meeting held in old revolutionary base," read the Global Times headline.
But "all official Chinese websites use the standard story with less sensationalizing titles," said Mei. "If anything, this propaganda piece is more about projecting an image of unity of the CMC to the outside world than revealing weakness," she said, referring to the Central Military Commission that Xi chairs.
For democracies, the notion that a head of state would have to publicly remind a nation's armed forces to be loyal and obedient seems bizarre. But in many authoritarian nations, the military is both the guarantor of the regime's survival, and the lone force that can overthrow the government.
Thus in China — as in the former Soviet Union, from which China learned much — the Communist Party keeps a close eye on the military. Political commissars are assigned to military units, ships and submarines, where they share authority with the regular unit commander, with particular oversight over unit morale and political indoctrination.
But reconciling political control with military efficiency is a challenge. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Red Army commissars functioned as co-commanders in military units. After repeated disasters caused in part by confusion and paralysis over who was in charge, Stalin eventually agreed to subordinate the commissars to the regular commanders.
Xi, the son of a political commissar, believes that China's armed forces need more political motivation. During the June speech, he "analyzed the deep-seated problems that need to be addressed in military political work, emphasizing that a root cause of these problems lies in the lack of ideals and beliefs," Global Times said.
Beyond military corruption, Xi also is concerned about what he sees as decadence in Chinese society — especially among young people — which is undermining Chinese military power. In his mind, "younger PLA folks don't want to die for their motherland," said Mei. "They prefer video games, Korean boybands and quiet quitting."
Michael Peck is a defense writer whose work has appeared in Forbes, Defense News, Foreign Policy magazine, and other publications. He holds an MA in political science from Rutgers Univ. Follow him on Twitter and LinkedIn.