Fifth Plenum purges leave PLA under Xi (almost) alone, creating a risk-averse vacuum that favors grey-zone aggression.

By Probe International

Analysis by Atul Kumar for the Observer Research Foundation

A recent high-level meeting of China’s Communist Party has exposed deep turmoil in the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) senior ranks, according to new analysis published by the Observer Research Foundation (ORF).

The Fifth Plenum of the 20th Central Committee, held October 26–29, removed three successive directors of the Central Military Commission’s General Office —“the nerve centre” that serves as President Xi Jinping’s primary channel of military control. All three of the expelled directors had served under Xi between 2012 and 2025. The purge did not stop there. The current session also formally punished or expelled a large number of military members of the Central Committee.

Of the 44 full military members elected in 2022, 26 have now been expelled, including 15 at the latest plenum alone. Attendance at the meeting itself was sharply lower than in 2022, with nearly a quarter of members absent.

As it stands, the Central Military Commission has been reduced to just two members: Xi and Zhang Shengmin, an anti-corruption enforcer and political commissar with no operational command experience. Many key PLA institutions, including three of the five theater commands and several service headquarters, currently lack permanent senior leadership.

The purges are said to reflect a recurring pattern in which Xi promotes officers on the basis of personal loyalty, only to later remove them once they accumulate independent networks and institutional influence. Even longtime associates have not been spared. The result is described as a leadership vacuum reminiscent of earlier periods of internal upheaval, including the Cultural Revolution and the years after the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown.

While these moves consolidate Xi’s personal authority, they narrow the options for major military operations in the near term. Routine activities — border patrols, maritime deployments, theater exercises, and equipment modernization — have continued without interruption, and the operational chain of command appears intact, notes the ORF report. However, senior officers focused on political survival are unlikely to take calculated risks or show independent initiative. Lower-level commanders have responded with heightened conformity to political directives and a preference for rigid, low-risk actions that demonstrate loyalty without inviting scrutiny.

The report concludes this dynamic encourages “peripheral aggression”: grey-zone operations such as maritime harassment, new patrol baselines, and sustained presence activities that stay below the threshold of war. Such moves allow officers to show resolve and advance Xi’s strategic goals while minimizing personal political risk.

The 21st Party Congress in 2027 may bring a new generation of officers into senior posts. Restoring institutional stability and operational confidence, however, is expected to take time. Xi’s apparent preference for technocratic, less corrupt, and operationally capable leaders that are also “institutionally lightweight and non-threatening” is “a combination that is difficult to find.”

Atul Kumar is a Fellow in the Strategic Studies Programme at the Observer Research Foundation (ORF) in New Delhi.

Continue to the publisher’s website here to read this analysis in full.