The Pattern Behind Xi Jinping’s Military Purges

On April 8, China’s Central Military Commission (CMC) convened a “rectification” training session for the remaining senior officers in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Chairman Xi Jinping delivered the opening speech. On the dais beside him at the National Defense University in Beijing sat a single colleague: Zhang Shengmin. The CMC’s discipline inspection chief had become, alongside Xi, the only other member of China’s top military body, after two of its most powerful generals were placed under investigation in January. Most outside readings have treated this scene as a purity ritual, another turn of the screw in Xi’s decade-long campaign…