One Man's Army

China’s military is set to undergo its most sweeping leadership change in history as Xi readies to stamp his authority over the PLA at the October 18 party congress

- Ananth Krishnan in Beijing

If Mao Zedong understood that “political power grows out of the barrel of a gun”, some of his successors have found that enforcing the maxim hasn’t always been straightforward. In China’s recent history, or at least for the past two decades under Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA)—unique among the world’s militaries in serving a political party, not a state—resisted tight civilian oversight, functioning largely as a state-within-a-state. The PLA outwardly paid obeisance to the party. In return, its generals were left to run their fiefdoms.

Not any more. Since taking over in November 2012, Xi Jinping has waged a relentless war to tame the PLA. Over the past five years, he has pushed through sweeping reforms the army long resisted. First, the Chinese president disbanded the four vast autonomous departments that oversaw the army’s personnel, logistics, armaments and political affairs, cutting them down to size and bringing them under the direct control of the party’s Central Military Commission (CMC), which Xi heads. He then went after corrupt officers and their cliques, purging 42 senior officers, including two of the PLA’s highest-ranking generals. In their stead, he promoted younger officers, many of whom owe their allegiance to, and have long-standing ties with, Xi, who also anointed himself the party’s first civilian commander-in-chief.

XI’S PARTY