Brandon Tran and Gerui Zhang
A year-long anti-corruption campaign has purged major senior personnel from the ranks of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). While graft is endemic to the Chinese military, purges in Leninist regimes also serve a political purpose. Fierce internal power struggles are another feature of such regimes, with control over the military seen as vital to consolidating power. In the Chinese military system, Xi Jinping is not the only person who has power over personnel. Recently, some observers have suggested that his vice chair on the Central Military Commission (CMC), Zhang Youxia (张又侠), may have ordered recent purges in the PLA Navy. If this is true, it could suggest that Xi Jinping’s traditional bases of support in the PLA are weakened and that his authority over the PLA is far from absolute (People’s Report, October 11, 2024; X/@yanmingshiping, November 28, 2024).
Two Purges Have Targeted Two Xi Factions
The current CMC consists of five men besides Xi, according to the Ministry of National Defense website. These individuals are pulled from Xi’s two major bases of support in the PLA, the Shaanxi Gang (陕西帮) and the Fujian Clique (福建系). The former stems from Xi’s family connections as a princeling—both Zhang Youxia and Zhang Shengmin (张升民) hail from Shaanxi Province. Zhang Youxia also has close familial ties to Xi, as the two men’s fathers served in the same unit during the civil war. The latter group is composed of He Weidong (何卫东) and Miao Hua (苗华), who worked with Xi when he was an official in Fujian Province. This leaves Liu Zhenli (刘振立), who is more aligned with the Shaanxi Gang by virtue of his relationship with Zhang Youxia. Both men served in the same campaign during the Sino-Vietnamese War (VOA Chinese, October 24, 2022; MND, accessed March 3). [1]
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