In 2012, after Xi Jinping became the top leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and assumed the chairmanship of the Central Military Commission (CMC), he set an ambitious political goal: eliminate democratic Taiwan and make it part of the People’s Republic of China under the CCP’s rule. However, as he began to pursue this mission, he discovered that being the head of the Party and taking the helm of the military commission, does not mean he has the real control of or the power to command the party’s gun — the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
Additionally, the PLA faced significant challenges in terms of the capability to execute a war. So, he started his anti-corruption campaign as well as military reform. How did Xi Jinping reassume control of the PLA with the military reform?
For Xi Jinping to take over Taiwan by force, he needs two conditions. The first is that he must be able to command the PLA, and second, the PLA must be ready for war. In Xi’s own words, the PLA must “be able to fight and win battles.” However, after becoming the Party secretary general and chairman of the military Commission, Xi found that he had neither condition. The PLA wasn’t responding to his leadership and was corrupt to the core. While conducting an anti-corruption campaign, he also launched the biggest military reform in the PLA’s history, which began in 2015 and is still ongoing.
Let’s analyze how Xi Jinping consolidated power through military reform and how he has prepared the PLA for war.
First things first: power!
One of Xi Jinping’s first challenges was his lack of control over the military. Although Xi took over the position of chairman of the Central Military Commission from his predecessor Hu Jintao, Jiang Zemin and his cronies controlled the PLA.
Jiang was a technocrat and had no connection or influence in the military when Deng Xiaoping promoted him to party secretary. After Deng died in 1997, Jiang used promotion as a means of co-opting military leaders to gain their loyalty and indiscriminately conferred the rank of general.
From 1992 to 1997, in just five years, he promoted nearly 100 officers to the rank of 3-star general and approximately 430 to the ranks of 2-star and 1-star generals. It is of note that the PLA does not have a 4-star general rank. By comparison, Deng Xiaoping had awarded the 3-star general title to only 17 senior PLA officers. On October 24, 1997, Jiang promoted 152 officers to one, two, and three-star generals in a single day. To curry favor with the officers, Jiang also condoned the military’s involvement in business and smuggling.
During his rule and Hu Jintao’s time as party leader, Jiang Zemin relied on the two vice chairmen of the Military Commission, Guo Boxiong and Xu Caihou, to command the PLA for him. Guo and Xu promoted a large number of officers at all levels and instituted a promotion mechanism plagued by bribery. Every level had a price tag. Major generals were priced from 5 million to 10 million yuan; lieutenant generals from 10 to 30 million yuan. Division, regiment, battalion, and company levels all had price tags. Everything was up for sale.
But to Xi Jinping, financial corruption wasn’t the worst problem. He once said that the crux of the problems regarding Xu and Guo was their disloyalty towards the party. Jiang Zemin’s associates in the military formed small clans and political interest groups and jeopardized Xi Jinping’s leadership of the PLA.
For Xi to regain the command of the Party’s gun, he had to cleanse the Jiang faction and get rid of those disloyal to him. Since 2012, the PLA has seen at least 160 officers with the general ranks removed in Xi’s anti-corruption campaign. But that wasn’t enough. So he started a multi-year military reform. While the reform was justified in the name of optimizing and improving the PLA’s ability to fight wars and preparing for national unification, it was also Xi’s plan for dismantling Jiang’s network of cronies in the PLA.
Military reform: more direct control
Xi Jinping began his military reform in November 2015. It was a 5-year program that was originally scheduled to be completed in 2020.
First, Xi reorganized the Central Military Commission. The original Commission consisted of 11 people: the chairman, two vice chairmen, the head of the Navy, Army, and Air Force and the Second Artillery Corps (now known as the Rocket Force), as well as the heads of the four departments under the Commission, namely, the General Staff Department, the Political, the Logistics, and the Armaments departments. These four departments combined decision-making, executive, and supervisory functions and had become too powerful, in Xi’s opinion.
Xi broke them up into 15 smaller departments, including those responsible for strategic decision-making, battle command, procurement, intelligence, and more. This flattened command structure is more responsive to modern warfare, and the power of each department is reduced. He also reduced the size of the Central Military Commission from 11 people to 7, comprising only individuals he trusted.
Xi also abolished the PLA’s 7 military regions. These were the Shenyang, Beijing, Jinan, Nanjing, Guangzhou, Chengdu, and Lanzhou military regions, which had been in place for nearly 70 years. Each region was responsible for the training and development of the troops as well as commanding actual combat if they went to war. The 7 military regions were 7 powerful independent kingdoms. Even Mao Zedong feared the region commanders and once ordered them to swap jobs.
The 7 military regions had their own schools, hospitals, hotels, and media outlets; many of these were for-profit businesses and were the cash cows for the military. Xi broke them up and created 5 war zones or theater commands: the eastern, western, northern, southern, and central theater commands. He cut back on the non-combat organizations, such as the military performing arts troupe, which was a breeding ground for corruption and lechery.
The 5 theater commands were given the responsibility of wartime command and had direct operational control over all air, sea, ground, and conventional missile forces located in their area. They reported to the joint chief of staff and to the Central Military Commission.
Each of the 5 war zones or theater commands shoulders a strategic ambition. The northern theater faces the Korean Peninsula and Russia; the eastern theater faces Taiwan, the first island chain and the Pacific; the southern theater faces the South China Sea and Southeast Asia; the western theater faces India and Central Asia, and the central theater is responsible for protecting the capital, the regime.
Military reform: joint warfare oriented
Although the PLA included the Navy, Army, and Air Force, as well as the Second Artillery Corps, the Army or the land force dominated the PLA and enjoyed higher status. The strategic support functions, including space, cyber, and electronic warfare capabilities, were mostly under the Army’s control. Xi’s military reform moved space, cyber, and electronic warfare capabilities away from the Army and created a new military branch: the Strategic Support Force. It also elevated the Second Artillery Corps to become the Rocket Force.
In September 2016, the Joint Logistics Force was established directly under the Central Military Commission. Organizationally, it’s parallel to the five other forces but is not an independent military branch. The military reform also expanded the PLA’s Marine Corps.
The reform followed the principle that “the Military Commission is in charge overall, the theater commands are in charge of war, and the military branches are in charge of training and development.”
Xi’s military reform copied the U.S. military’s Joint Staff and Joint Warfare systems and adopted the American military command structure by separating administrative and operational commands. The Military Commission is the ultimate command center that issues orders to theater commands, which are responsible for wartime planning and command operations. The function of the theater commands is to “release” combat capabilities in times of war.
The 5 military branches, including air, land, sea, rocket, and strategic support forces, are mainly responsible for war-preparedness training and development of weapons and equipment. Their function is to “supply” combat capabilities. The theater commands and the branches report to the Central Military Commission.
After the reform, a permanent Joint Command Center of the Military Commission was established, and theater command centers were also established. In this system, the Military Commission has a flat war command structure that allows it to have a unified command and deploy joint application of its forces. On April 20, 2016, Xi Jinping made his first public appearance as the commander-in-chief of the Joint Command Center of the Military Commission.
The cornerstone of Xi Jinping’s military reform is power segregation. The purpose is to ensure that he retains absolute control of the PLA.
Breaking up the 4 general departments of the Military Commission into 15 smaller ones makes them less powerful. By reorganizing the 7 independent military regions into 5 theaters and separating the wartime command from the day-to-day training and development of the PLA, Xi Jinping has built-in checks and balances to prevent any unit from dominating the PLA. This flattened or distributed structure is modeled after the American military and is more compatible with modern warfare.
It sounds good, but the question is: how effective is it, and did he achieve the intended goal?
It’s been more than 8 years now since this reform started, and we haven’t heard anything about its completion. It has obviously missed the 2020 deadline. I think Xi Jinping’s military reform might have a fundamental problem and could be hurting him now. In the third part of this CCP & PLA series, we’ll discuss the problem Xi Jinping’s military reform created for the PLA.
