As the cashiering of members of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) high command continues to roll on, some analysts have suggested that the removals by President Xi Jinping are akin to the purges in the Soviet Union’s late Stalinist period (1945-1953). On the surface, both the Xi and Stalinist purges appear to be driven by concerns over coalescing patron-client networks – as both strongmen strived to preserve their personalist rule while seeking great power status for their respective regimes.
Stalin carried out numerous high-profile personnel purges in the army, where a series of charges were fabricated to eliminate perceived threats to his rule. The most notable example was the 1946 Aviator’s Affair where the acolytes of Georgy Zhukov, former marshal of the Soviet Union, were purged. This paralleled China’s recent removal of the former first-ranked Central Military Commission (CMC) vice chair, Zhang Youxia, which appeared to be driven by Xi’s desire to further centralize his control over the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its armed wing.
However, China’s supreme leader has been dismantling networks more swiftly and systematically than Stalin did, for the purpose of putting in place what appears to be a more uncompromising form of personalistic rule. Such a governance model would likely face issues across the PLA which, ultimately, may prove deleterious to Xi’s global ambitions.
Comparing Purges in Stalin’s USSR and Xi’s China
In his later years, after abolishing the old Politburo in 1952, Stalin replaced it with an oversized Presidium with many younger and less-politically experienced technocrats more inclined to panegyrize him. Similarly, Stalin stripped Zhukov from his prestigious posts and relegated him to a minor command, a move aimed at diminishing his influence in the Soviet Red Army following its post-World War II victory.
One year later, in the Aviator’s Affair, Stalin tortured and killed at least 15 key senior Soviet Air Force officers associated with Zhukov – meant ostensibly to diminish Zhukov’s influence. By retaining only personnel loyal to himself and destroying seemingly threatening patron-client networks, Stalin transformed the Soviet state from a neo-patrimonial system, where power initially flowed through patron-client networks, into an increasingly personalistic rule. That system endured until Stalin’s death.
In contemporary China, Xi Jinping’s purges have had the same effect of enhancing personalistic rule in Chinese elite politics. With the purging of Zhang Youxia and Zhang’s so-called “Shaanxi Gang,” Xi clearly is intolerant of “mountaintop-ism” – the phenomenon of the Communist Party’s civilian and military elites building up their own powerbases. Their fellow “princeling” status and shared ancestral roots in Shaanxi province was not enough to save Zhang, nor was the vice chair’s immense support to the CMC chairman to push through his defense reforms when Xi had yet to consolidate power.
With Zhang’s ouster, Xi has basically eradicated every active senior PLA leader he had promoted prior to 2022 – with the exception of Zhang Shengmin. In their places, Xi has elevated second-line deputies who are younger and hungrier – but perhaps more likely to be compliant to their civilian commander-in-chief.
Unlike in Xi’s China, however, until his demise in 1953, Stalin sought to dismantle the patron-client ties of his purported rivals surgically rather than wholesale. To curtail the influence of the chairman of the Special Committee on Atomic Energy, Lavrentiy Beria, Stalin destroyed Beria’s networks by fabricating cases through the Mingrelian Conspiracy. Beria’s Mingrelian associates within the Georgian leadership were purged as a means of warning Beria about his rising influence. Such an oblique way of pruning the power of a member of his inner circle appears by comparison to Xi, a more moderate way in dealing with patron-clientelism.
What the Ongoing Purges Might Mean for Chinese Military Power
Xi Jinping’s wholesale removal of patron-client networks, while seemingly centralizing political control unto himself, might create strategic deficiencies by depriving the PLA of much-needed operational experience and expertise. With the removal of the battle-hardened Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli as well as their followers, informational and institutional memory in the Chinese military system could gradually diminish. That could pose an obstacle to the PLA’s goal of becoming a world-class military by mid-century.
In an increasingly personalistic system, political leaders may well also find themselves facing an information trap as they surround themselves with sycophants and “yes-men.” Political purges may be a reflection that inconvenient truths are not to be tolerated. With most of Stalin’s men too eager to please him, hitting quotas was prioritized over efficiency and quality. In many cases, data was inflated and unusable equipment were produced just to meet targets, leading to the production of subpar armaments like tanks delivered without radios, and aircraft lacking spare parts, among others.
While not completely similar, the climate of fear within the Soviet military establishment at the time may well be mirrored in the present Chinese military. That could sabotage the PLA’s efforts at addressing its long-term structural issues due to information gaps. For instance, according to PLA reports on the Southern Theater Command (STC), more work is necessary to rectify “weaknesses and shortcomings in system-of-systems combat capabilities” and establish “lists of training problems, rectification measures, and responsibilities.”
Any aversion to making mistakes would only be detrimental to this work, if officers were to fabricate reports and exaggerate the efficacy of their follow-up measures – in turn, stymying the progress of the PLA’s training and operational readiness. Lest we forget, the phenomenon of faking combat capabilities in the Chinese system is not new.
Where the instrumentalization of violence as part of a country’s statecraft is concerned, purging its high command will have unintended effects. Indeed, any extensive cashiering of seasoned PLA officers will have implications for Chinese military readiness due to the concomitant loss of experience and expertise.
Take Miao Hua’s “Fujian Clique” as an example. A few of its members were previously deemed valuable for their expertise in managing the Eastern Theater Command (ETC), which oversees the Taiwan Strait, including contingency planning and training as well as operations other than war. Although some of those posts in the ETC have since been filled of late – for instance, the installation of Yang Zhibin as ETC commander – the purges could still set back Xi’s ambitions for Taiwan.
In Stalin’s case, his Great Purge (1936-1938) would decimate the core of the Soviet military-industrial complex, and contributed to deficiencies in arms production for a while.
A Cautionary Tale for an Ever More Confident Xi?
Unlike Stalin, who was compelled to miss meetings with his inner circle frequently in his final years due to poor health, Xi Jinping continues to be prominently involved in running the affairs of state, chairing important meetings and engaging with major world leaders. His ruthless efficiency in removing so many senior civilian and military elites demonstrates his confidence in dismantling patron-client networks deemed threatening to his rule – whether real or perceived.
In the PLA, the wholesale purges of the high command now may yet result in longer-term operational benefits, but still come with short- to medium-term strategic risks. Xi seems to be convinced, however, that China’s political stability depends on him ruling unopposed for the foreseeable future.
As things stand, the comprehensive removal of patron-client networks in the PLA’s top echelons seems to be moving toward an extreme form of personalistic rule, where the incumbent CMC chairman rules supreme. Institutional fear of falling out of favor in such a system would stifle and stymie further reform and progress, the very thing Xi has called for since his 2015 initiative to reshape the PLA in his own strongman image.
Xi had warned the CCP on first becoming its leader that the Chinese party-state should learn from the mistakes of the former Soviet Union. Ironically, he now may want to consider taking a leaf out of Stalin’s later purges and avoid going too far with his.
