Chinese Congress Sidesteps Purged Generals, Raising Questions About Xi’s Grip on Military: Insiders

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The Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) rubber-stamp congress quietly stripped several deputies of their seats this month but avoided taking action against two senior military figures whose political downfall had already been publicly announced. This omission is raising questions about internal resistance to Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s authority over the armed forces.

On Feb. 4, Chinese state media Xinhua News Agency announced the termination of the credentials of three National People’s Congress (NPC) deputies, all drawn from China’s defense-industrial sector.

The decision—or lack of one—ran counter to widespread expectations that the rubber-stamp congress would move swiftly to formalize their political removal, as has been standard practice in previous purges.

The three deputies, Zhou Xinmin, Luo Qi, and Liu Cangli, all have long careers in China’s military-industrial complex.

Zhou previously served as chairman and CCP secretary of the Aviation Industry Corporation of China. Luo is a member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a former chief engineer of China National Nuclear Corporation. Liu, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, once led the China Academy of Engineering Physics, the country’s premier nuclear weapons research institute.

According to Jin, if such a proposal had not been on the table, there would have been little reason to convene a special Standing Committee meeting at all. The NPC is already scheduled to hold its routine session later this month.

The fact that the proposal failed to pass, Jin said, suggests a breakdown in coordination at the top of the CCP’s political hierarchy—and may point to emerging friction between Xi and Zhao Leji, who oversees the NPC.

If accurate, the episode would mark a rare instance in which the NPC did not move in lockstep with Xi’s political agenda on a high-stakes personnel matter.

Mainland constitutional scholar Huang Tian, also speaking under a pseudonym, told The Epoch Times that while the NPC Standing Committee has wide discretion in handling deputies’ qualifications, the pattern on display is politically atypical.

“In form, selectively terminating certain deputies’ credentials does not violate procedure,” Huang said. “But in substance, handling only peripheral figures while deliberately avoiding the core targets is not how the system normally operates.”

In previous anti-corruption campaigns and military purges, once senior generals were formally investigated, the revocation of their NPC status was typically a procedural formality.

What makes the current episode stand out, Huang noted, is that the NPC Standing Committee met shortly after Zhang and Liu’s investigations were announced—yet chose not to act on their cases at all.

“If the leadership believes it is too early to make a decision, the issue usually does not enter the meeting agenda in the first place,” he said. “There is little precedent for convening a meeting and then deliberately sidestepping the most central figures.”

Another China-based scholar, identified only by his surname He, due to fears of reprisal, told The Epoch Times that the NPC’s inaction sends a political signal.

“It indicates that consensus has not yet been reached within the top leadership on key questions of military authority and institutional control,” he said.

On Feb. 6, the CCP’s propaganda mouthpiece People’s Daily published an article titled “Always Keeping Soldiers’ Well-Being at Heart—Chairman Xi Jinping’s Deep Concern.” The piece relied on retrospective, emotive storytelling about Xi’s past troop inspections and expressions of care for rank-and-file soldiers—but offered no information about current military decision-making or command activity.

The contrast underscores the opaque reality of the CCP’s military governance.

To date, no official verdict has been reached regarding Zhang and Liu. The operational status of the CMC and the trajectory of Xi’s authority within it remain uncertain.