Xi’s control of his regime is looking ever more Stalinist
With repeated purges, Xi Jinping increasingly resembles Joseph Stalin in controlling the regime that he leads.
The Chinese Communist Party general secretary and national president shows widespread distrust of lieutenants. Their loyalty to him earlier in their careers seems to count for nothing. Their capacity to do their jobs also seems unimportant to him.
This particularly raises questions about the evolving competence of the armed forces.
With the removal this month of Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, two of four remaining members of the Central Military Commission (one of the other two being the president himself), Xi has even been willing to leave the highest body of the armed forces without adequate expertise.
The first signs of the latest move appeared on 20 January. On that day the CCP convened a provincial- and ministerial-level leadership seminar, a routine but politically significant event often used to signal elite alignment and policy priorities. According to official media coverage, four Politburo members did not attend the opening session: Central Military Commission (CMC) Vice Chairman Zhang Youxia, Organization Department Director Shi Taifeng, former Xinjiang Party Secretary Ma Xingrui and Vice Premier He Lifeng. Only the absence of He Lifeng, who was attending the World Economic Forum in Switzerland, was explained.
Footage from state broadcaster CCTV further showed that CMC member Liu Zhenli was also absent. While Shi Taifeng later appeared before the conclusion of the seminar, Ma Xingrui had previously missed multiple key meetings, reinforcing speculation about his political standing. Newly appointed CMC Vice Chairman Zhang Shengmin and Defence Minister Dong Jun attended the opening ceremony on 20 January, but only Dong Jun appeared at the closing ceremony on 23 January; Zhang Shengmin was notably absent. Liu Zhenli missed both sessions. Within the tightly choreographed environment of CCP elite politics, such attendance patterns rarely escape notice.
And on 24 January the Ministry of National Defence said Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli had been formally placed under investigation. The announcement sent shockwaves through political and security circles. This development seems to leave the current CMC without a senior leader possessing substantial field command experience. Although Zhang Shengmin was promoted to vice chairman at the end of last year, his career has been rooted primarily in political work and disciplinary oversight. While this background may enhance internal compliance and organisational discipline, his capacity to supervise complex joint operations and high-intensity warfighting is doubtful.
The investigations into Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli suggest that Xi Jinping’s control over the Chinese military has entered a phase of heightened political centralisation. Since assuming power, Xi has overseen the removal of many senior military figures—from Xu Caihou and Guo Boxiong during the Hu Jintao era to, Zhang Yang and Fang Fenghui in 2017, and more recently former rocket force commander Wei Fenghe, former defence minister Li Shangfu, and Miao Hua, who previously worked with Xi around the turn of the century, when the president was governor of Fujian.
Taken together, these cases demonstrate that neither service affiliation nor personal proximity to the top leader guarantees protection. The investigation of Zhang Youxia, the son of a founding general of the people’s republic, emphasises that red lineage and revolutionary pedigree no longer confer political immunity.
Rather than relying on stable patron-client relationships that have long been a feature of Chinese politics, Xi appears increasingly willing to exploit factional rivalries within the armed forces, using mutual accusations, internal audits and disciplinary dossiers to neutralise potential centres of influence. This approach strengthens top-down control but risks fostering an atmosphere of fear and mistrust within the officer corps.
The earlier detention of Miao Hua is particularly instructive. Miao’s cross-service experience and postings across multiple military regions, followed by his tenure in charge of the military’s Political Work Department, put him in a position to shape personnel appointments and promotions across the force. Such authority inevitably facilitates the formation of informal networks and factions within the military.
For Xi, the existence of autonomous military factions, regardless of their personal or historical ties to him, is fundamentally unacceptable. Although both He Weidong and Miao Hua had previously worked in positions that intersected with Xi’s own career, the emergence of self-contained power bases within the Chinese military appears to have crossed a political red line. Viewed in this context, the detention of both He Weidong and Zhang Youxia as CMC vice chairmen underscores a broader reality: Xi places no absolute trust in princeling networks or former associates. Political loyalty is constantly subject to re-evaluation.
At present, the CMC effectively consists of Xi and Vice Chairman Zhang Shengmin. All other members have been removed or are under investigation. The Joint Staff Department, a critical node for operational planning, joint command and crisis management, appears leaderless. So Xi puts internal political stability above external combat readiness.
Paradoxically, such a political climate may incentivise ambitious officers to demonstrate loyalty through assertive tactical behaviour, as ASPI’s Nathan Attrill has pointed out. This could mean greater frequency and visibility of air and maritime activities around Taiwan, including joint combat readiness patrols, grey-zone manoeuvres and routine exercises designed to signal resolve. However, these actions are likely to remain tightly bounded. The absence of trusted, experienced field commanders at the top may actually discourage large-scale operational innovation or escalation. So the result is more likely to be tactical activism combined with strategic caution—showing strength without incurring excessive political or military risk.
Altogether, Xi’s approach increasingly resembles a Stalinist model of control, characterised by pervasive distrust of senior commanders and officials regardless of their past loyalty or credentials. For the armed forces, his ultimate objective may be a comprehensive purge followed by the promotion of a younger generation of officers, echoing Jiang Zemin’s strategy in the 1990s. By ensuring that no Politburo member possesses an independent military power base, Xi can retain exclusive control over the gun, even if future arrangements change the distribution of formal party or state titles.
Such a trajectory would further transform the long-standing principle that ‘the Party commands the gun’ into a more personalised system in which ‘Xi commands the gun’. This shift risks pushing China’s armed forces back towards something like the old model in which being red was more important than being expert—more specifically meaning that being politically loyal was more important than having professional competence. Whether such a force, despite increasingly advanced hardware, can perform effectively in modern warfare may be doubted. Ultimately, wars are fought not by equipment alone, but by people operating under pressure, uncertainty and imperfect information.
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