Signs of Strain Emerge Inside China’s Top Military Body After Senior Purge: Insiders
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The insiders spoke to The Epoch Times on condition of anonymity or by providing only their surnames out of fear of reprisal.
Several military insiders revealed that day-to-day operations at the Central Military Commission (CMC) have deviated from standard practice. Tasks traditionally overseen or coordinated by the commission’s vice chairmen are now being handled differently, often without the same degree of centralized control.
According to these insiders, low-level officers have sensed that senior leadership is scrambling to adapt and to mitigate gaps in coordination and execution.
Why the Vice Chairmen Matter
Under long-standing PLA practice, CMC vice chairmen serve as a critical bridge between the top PLA leadership and the vast execution apparatus below it. They participate in top-level deliberations and ensure that directives are implemented across services, theater commands, and administrative organs.Under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), the military is loyal to the Party, and the CMC serves as the Party’s top supreme decision-making body for the military.
For years, vice chairmen have been highly visible at major military meetings, inspection tours, and internal mobilization events. Their public appearances have functioned as informal indicators of whether the chain of command is functioning smoothly.
Liang, a China-based military scholar who studies the PLA’s command system, told The Epoch Times that the current signs of sidelining are significant because of the military’s extreme centralization.
“Power in the Chinese military doesn’t become more efficient simply because it’s concentrated,” Liang said. “On the contrary, the more centralized it is, the more it depends on intermediate layers to absorb coordination and execution pressure.”
The vice chairmen are not ceremonial figures, he emphasized.
“They exist because the top leader cannot directly manage the entire military. Especially during periods of instability or structural adjustment, this layer becomes more important,” he said.
A Shift in Propaganda
Since Zhang’s downfall, however, the PLA’s public messaging has subtly shifted. Its propaganda outlets, such as the PLA Daily, now focus almost exclusively on Chinese leader and CMC chairman Xi Jinping’s meetings with foreign officials. Other senior CMC members have largely disappeared from public view.Collective appearances that were once routine now appear scaled back, particularly at the vice chairman and CMC member levels.
Liu, another China-based military scholar, said such visibility—or the lack of it—matters deeply in a system such as China’s.
“In a highly centralized command structure, public appearances are themselves organizational signals,” Liu said. “Who shows up, and who doesn’t, tells the entire system where the real power is concentrated.”
When vice chairmen remain out of public view for extended periods, Liu said, low-level military units struggle to determine priorities and boundaries.
“The result is often hesitation and slower execution,” he said.
A Chinese political analyst told The Epoch Times that while CMC vice chairmen are not formally irreplaceable, their functional absence affects the efficiency of the entire system.
“This doesn’t mean there’s a vacuum of military authority,” the analyst said. “But it does mean that pressure once distributed across multiple nodes is now being pushed upward—onto Xi Jinping himself and onto Zhang Shengmin, the newly promoted vice chairman.”
In practice, the analyst noted, many lower-level officials had long built their work routines around Zhang Youxia as a key point of coordination. With that node abruptly removed, the chain of command has slowed, and feedback loops have lengthened.
The CCP has offered no public explanation of how the CMC is currently operating, nor has it announced any formal institutional changes. The PLA has also remained silent on whether interim arrangements are in place.
