Steel without trust: Xi Jinping’s PLA purges amidst spectacle of military power

Xi Jinping’s anti-corruption campaign against the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is entering its most dramatic phase yet. In September, Beijing expelled four generals from the National People’s Congress. Among them were Wang Chunning, the commander of the People’s Armed Police, and senior figures from the Rocket Force and logistics departments.

This purge follows the earlier ouster of Admiral Miao Hua, a member of the Central Military Commission (CMC) — and once considered a close Xi ally — as well as General He Weidong, who was serving as the Vice-Chairman of the CMC. Together, these moves represent the most sweeping dismantling of senior military leadership since the Mao era, exposing the contradiction at the core of Xi’s bid to build a “world-class military” by mid-century.

The purge machinery has been justified under the banner of anti-corruption. As with the Party-state, accusations of “serious violations of discipline” provide a catch-all instrument for removing officers deemed disloyal or ineffective. Yet, the scale and visibility of these purges suggests that corruption is only one layer of the problem.

Xi’s removal of protégés such as Hua in the past, and the current round of dismissals along with Chunning — Wang Zhibin, who served as the Rocket Force’s chief of discipline; Zhang Lin, head of the Central Military Commission’s Logistics Support Department; and Gao Daguang, political commissar of the Joint Logistics Support Force under the CMC — indicate a deeper trust deficit between the Communist Party and its own armed wing.

In effect, Xi is signalling that the PLA’s institutional loyalty is not assured, even after more than a decade of heavy-handed centralisation. This makes the timing of the September 3, 2025, military parade in Beijing all the more ironic. The event, staged with maximum fanfare, showcased China’s nuclear triad, hypersonic weapons, drone swarms, and directed-energy systems. To international audiences, it was an attempted projection of inevitability: China as a military-industrial behemoth racing ahead of its rivals. Yet behind the steel and spectacle lies a hollowing-out of trust in the very officers and institutions tasked with operating this arsenal. The contrast is striking. Beijing wants the world to marvel at its hardware, but is simultaneously purging the custodians of that hardware as untrustworthy.

This contradiction undermines the very credibility the parade was meant to project, especially as there remain doubts about whether the weapons on display are fully operational. Now, with the generals behind the Rocket Force and logistics corps under corruption clouds, even the PLA’s internal chain of command appears unstable. The symbolism is unmissable: China may parade missile canisters and drone squadrons, but the institutional backbone — the commanders, procurement officers, and logisticians — remains under suspicion. Spectacle without trust risks being dismissed as theatre. Furthermore, the cost is mounting.

Purges breed paranoia within the ranks, incentivising conformity over initiative. They also disrupt continuity at precisely the moment when the PLA faces its steepest learning curve: mastering joint operations, integrating new technologies, and adapting to information-centric warfare in the lead-up to the 2027 PLA Centennial. If commanders fear that today’s promotion may become tomorrow’s disgrace, the incentive to take risks or innovate collapses. The purge of Rocket Force generals — custodians of China’s strategic deterrent— illustrates the danger. A branch vital to Beijing’s nuclear signalling now finds its credibility undercut by internal scandal. This gap between image and reality matters because military power rests as much on trust and institutional resilience as on weapons platforms.

For India, the United States, and others, the lesson is not to dismiss China’s parade of hardware, but to interpret it through the prism of political fragility. Xi may dazzle with hypersonic missiles and drone submarines, but he also reveals that he does not fully trust those holding the launch keys. In the long run, this tension could reshape China’s military trajectory. Modernisation will continue, but its character may be increasingly shaped by political loyalty tests rather than professional competence. For adversaries, that introduces both risks and opportunities.

A PLA driven by fear of purges may struggle in complex operations, yet its unpredictability — fuelled by loyalty-first promotions — makes miscalculation more likely. In this sense, Xi’s PLA is both more dangerous and less reliable: a force equipped with cutting-edge tools but shadowed by institutional mistrust.

The 2025 parade was meant to showcase inevitability. Instead, it has highlighted contradiction. China’s rise in steel and spectacle is real, but the purges reveal a leadership that cannot trust its own guardians. Xi may consolidate power through fear, but the paradox is plain: the more he asserts control, the more he exposes the fragility of the institutions meant to carry his vision forward.