analysis
What China’s new PLA leaders reveal about Xi’s unfinished military rebuild
While newly promoted full generals have taken charge of key commands, many other senior roles appear to be filled by acting or unconfirmed officers amid a sweeping anti-graft drive, observers note.
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BEIJING: Lower-ranking officers have emerged in some of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) most senior roles without Beijing publicly announcing them, with analysts saying the unusual move suggests President Xi Jinping is far from rebuilding the military’s top brass amid a sweeping anti-corruption purge.
They add that the reliance on acting or unconfirmed leaders also points to a narrower pool of trusted officers and uncertainty over who will ultimately survive the transition, even as elevating experienced insiders helps maintain day-to-day continuity, with newly promoted full generals taking charge of key commands.
“The PLA is restoring day-to-day command and organisational continuity faster than Xi Jinping is rebuilding confidence in the officers now filling senior roles,” Nathan Attrill, a senior analyst at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), told CNA.
“Xi is ensuring that key organisations remain operational by elevating deputies and other senior officers, but he remains cautious about granting many of them permanent appointments, full rank and the institutional authority that comes with formal confirmation.”
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The latest round of reshuffling follows several years of sweeping anti-corruption purges that have reached the PLA’s highest ranks.
In January, Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli – respectively vice-chairman and Joint Staff Department chief of China’s highest military leadership body, the Central Military Commission (CMC) – were placed under investigation.
An editorial by the PLA Daily, the Chinese military’s official newspaper, subsequently described their cases as part of the armed forces’ anti-corruption campaign.
Fellow CMC members He Weidong and Miao Hua were expelled from the Communist Party and military in 2025, and former defence minister Li Shangfu in 2024.
The upheaval has effectively left the seven-member CMC, formed after the 20th Party Congress in 2022, with only two active members – Xi as chairman and vice-chairman Zhang Shengmin. Zhang Shengmin was promoted to the post in October 2025.
The fallout has extended well beyond the CMC, with senior posts across its departments, the theatre commands and the armed services also left vacant or unsettled after officers were removed or disappeared from public view.
WHO IS FILLING THE GAPS?
As many as 20 key PLA positions have been reassigned following the purges, the South China Morning Post (SCMP) reported on Aug 5. The news outlet identified 15 officers by name as apparent new leaders.
SCMP said it pieced together the changes largely through state media footage and other public appearances – examining officers’ rank insignia, departmental markings and protocol seating to assess who appeared to be taking over senior responsibilities.
CNA was able to independently corroborate eight of the officers named in the report as holding senior posts or visibly assuming higher-level responsibilities, based on state news and military reports, foreign official readouts and other publicly available records.
But not all eight have been formally announced by Beijing as permanent chiefs of the units they appear to be leading.
Among those formally elevated, Zhang Shuguang was identified by state news agency Xinhua as head of the CMC’s discipline inspection and supervisory bodies, while Wang Gang was identified as air force commander. Both were promoted to full general in July.
Yang Zhibin was similarly promoted to full general in December last year as commander of the Eastern Theatre Command.
Han Shengyan was promoted to full general alongside Yang as commander of the Central Theatre Command, according to Xinhua.
The two full generals now head commands whose areas of responsibility include the capital region and operations involving Taiwan, respectively.
Meanwhile, Zhang Like has been publicly identified by PLA media as head of the CMC’s National Defence Mobilisation Department.
Beyond these announced appointments, the picture is less clear.
Cai Zhijun is the PLA Army’s chief of staff, but has not been formally announced as its commander. He has nevertheless emerged as one of the service’s most senior publicly visible operational officers after commander Li Qiaoming was stripped of his National People’s Congress deputy status in February.
The remaining two officers independently corroborated by CNA are in the navy. Vice-Admiral Zhang Zheng has appeared in protocol positions associated with the navy’s top operational leadership, while Vice-Admiral Hu Yuhai has appeared in positions associated with its top political leadership.
Beijing has not formally announced either man as navy commander or political commissar.
SCMP identified Zhang Zheng, Lieutenant General Zhu Chuansheng at the CMC Joint Staff Department and Lieutenant General Lei Kai in the Rocket Force as apparent successors to senior leaders who had been removed or disappeared from public view.
The positions attributed to them – navy commander, Joint Staff Department chief and Rocket Force commander respectively – have traditionally been held by full generals or admirals.
Zhang Zheng, Zhu and Lei had all risen to their current ranks only in recent years, but none has been formally announced in the top positions SCMP attributed to them.
Analysts said there also appears to be a broader layer of deputies, chiefs of staff and other lower-ranked officers keeping key bodies functioning while permanent appointments remain unsettled.
Shanshan Mei, a political scientist at the RAND Corporation, a US-based nonprofit research organisation specialising in public policy and national security, said formal appointments had so far appeared in some of the most strategically important commands, including the Eastern and Central theatres, while a “much larger layer underneath” is being run by “lower-ranked, unannounced acting officers”.
“With so many seats unsettled, real decision-making authority has concentrated at the very top, in Xi and perhaps a handful of confirmed principals, rather than being distributed the way a mature chain of command normally would,” she told CNA.
Analysts said the pattern suggests that the PLA has maintained day-to-day command continuity despite the upheaval, but has yet to restore a fully settled senior hierarchy.
“What this shows is the aftermath of the purges, which generated serious internal instability and created openings of critical positions that must be filled,” Yang Zi, a research fellow at the S Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), a Singapore think tank, told CNA.
“However, Xi seems to be taking his time in assessing these new leaders. That’s why officers occupying these positions are only acting leaders, rather than permanent ones.”
PERMANENT SUCCESSORS OR STAND-INS?
Who ultimately keeps their posts, if at all, remains unclear, analysts cautioned.
Attrill from ASPI said the scale of the purges had narrowed Xi’s pool of trusted senior officers, and acting appointments offer him a way to assess both political loyalty and performance before making permanent choices.
“The scale of the uncertainty goes beyond the PLA’s normal secrecy,” he said.
RSIS’ Yang likened the arrangement of acting appointments to a form of “probation” in the PLA context.
“If they perform well in this period, they will be allowed to stay. But if they cause any concerns, Xi will replace them,” he said.
The uncertainty extends to appointments at the very top.
The 21st Party Congress, expected in late 2027, is set to produce a new CMC line-up. But analysts cautioned against assuming that officers now filling senior posts will automatically be promoted into the top body.
Dennis Wilder, a professor of the practice at Georgetown University and former US National Security Council director for China, said Xi would be “extremely careful” in choosing the next CMC.
“No one is guaranteed an elevation to the top body,” he told CNA.
Suyash Desai, a political scientist specialising in China’s defence and foreign policies, said the pace of personnel changes is too fluid to identify clear long-term winners.
“It is very difficult to tell if these will be permanent officers or if there will be changes as we head toward the 2027 Party Congress and the PLA centenary,” he told CNA, citing how changes have been happening on a near-monthly basis.
For Yang of RSIS, the more fundamental question of who ultimately survives Xi’s military rebuild comes down to what the Chinese leader values most.
Operational competence remains important, he said, particularly in a rapidly changing security environment. But Xi has repeatedly shown a willingness to accept institutional disruption in pursuit of political control, Yang added.
“Political reliability comes first. Xi wants officers to be 100% loyal,” he said.
“The PLA must be controlled by loyalists, even if it comes at the cost of losing some competence.”
CONTINUITY – BUT WITH LESS AUTHORITY?
One factor helping the PLA absorb the upheaval is that many of the officers stepping up were already deeply embedded in the units they now appear to be leading, said analysts.
Several were previously deputies or chiefs of staff, giving them familiarity with internal procedures, personnel and operational planning even if they lack the rank or formal authority of their predecessors.
“I think there is real but uneven continuity beneath the upheaval,” said Mei of the RAND Corporation.
She pointed to the institutional experience of several of the emerging officers: Cai came through the army staff system, Zhang Zheng had served across naval headquarters, fleet and theatre roles and commanded the Liaoning aircraft carrier, while Lei was previously Rocket Force chief of staff after an earlier career in the air force.
“That continuity should preserve some staff processes, standing plans, and organisational knowledge. It does not, by itself, replace the accumulated authority, cross-service relationships, and crisis experience of the full generals who were removed,” she said.
Attrill from ASPI said that while deputies and chiefs of staff could preserve substantial organisational continuity, their authority might still fall short of formally appointed senior commanders and they might be “more cautious about making difficult decisions”.
Such limitations may be less visible in routine operations than in more complex tasks requiring adaptation or coordination across different parts of the military, analysts said.
For instance, the current arrangements should be sufficient to sustain regular military activity, including established patterns of pressure around Taiwan that the PLA has made “the new normal”, said political scientist Desai.
“It provides meaningful continuity in regular military operations,” he said.
China views Taiwan as its territory and has not ruled out the use of force to achieve what it calls reunification. It has stepped up drills around the island in recent years.
“We are still unaware of what happens to novel ideas like the PLA’s integrated joint operation goals, or amphibious beach landing operations, as these operations are much more than just continuity,” Desai said.
LOYALTY FIRST, BUT RISKS REMAIN
The changing balance among the services may offer another clue to how Xi is rebuilding the military leadership.
Wilder from Georgetown University said one striking feature of the emerging line-up was the prominence of officers with air force backgrounds, including Wang, Yang and Han, all of whom have been formally elevated to senior commands.
He linked that trend partly to the damage inflicted on army networks by the purges, including officers associated with the former 31st Group Army and with Zhang Youxia.
The former 31st Group Army, based in Fujian before it was reorganised as the 73rd Group Army in 2017, has drawn scrutiny because senior officers including former CMC members He and Miao served in the unit and have been viewed by analysts as part of a Fujian-linked cohort with ties to Xi’s years working in the province.
“I think this shows that as Xi has wiped out both the 31st Group Army and Zhang Youxia patronage networks, the (PLA) Army is in bad repute,” he said.
“Xi may believe that as a more technocratic and less powerful service, he should turn to this list of candidates,” Wilder said, referring to the emerging group of officers with air force backgrounds now moving into prominent positions.
Whatever the eventual balance among the services, analysts said a more immediate concern was how an unsettled command would perform under pressure.
Prolonged vacancies and uncertainty over authority could make senior officers more reluctant to exercise initiative, said Wilder.
“I believe that there is by definition a certain paralysis in senior decision-making,” he said.
“No one will want to make a mistake that gets them purged. They will be waiting for clear signals from Xi before making any key decisions.”
For ASPI’s Attrill, the bigger test comes not in routine operations but in a crisis that forces commanders to make rapid decisions under pressure.
“The main risk is not disobedience, but hesitation,” he said.
“Provisional leaders may defer decisions, avoid reporting bad news or be reluctant to depart from approved plans. The PLA can continue demonstrating activity around Taiwan; that does not prove it could manage the uncertainty and friction of a high-intensity war.”
At the same time, political scientist Desai cautioned that the loss of senior experience did not automatically make the PLA more or less effective, noting that military efficiency could ultimately only be tested in conflict.
Mei from the RAND Corporation similarly cautioned against treating personnel turmoil alone as evidence that the PLA’s operational readiness had deteriorated.
The clearest public test, she said, would be the quality of joint training. A sustained retreat from complex, multi-day and cross-service exercises involving mobilisation, logistics, command posts and amphibious or blockade operations would be more telling than a temporary lull.
“Personnel signals show institutional disruption; they become evidence about readiness only when they coincide with visible operational deterioration,” she said.
Source: CNA/lg(ws)
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