In 1938, in the midst of a long campaign to bring China under Chinese Communist Party (CCP) rule, Mao Zedong (毛澤東) wrote: “Whoever has an army has power.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), Mao’s latest successor, has taken that dictum to heart.
He has donned camouflage fatigues, installed himself as commander-in-chief and taken control of the 2 million-strong Chinese military: the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). It is the biggest overhaul of the PLA since Mao led it to victory in the nation’s civil war and founded the People’s Republic of China in 1949.
Illustration: June Hsu
Xi has accelerated the PLA’s shift to naval power from a traditionally land-based force. He has broken up its vast, Maoist-era military bureaucracy. A new chain of command leads directly to Xi as chairman of the Central Military Commission, China’s top military decisionmaking body.
Operational leadership of naval, missile, air, ground and cyberforces has been separated from administration and training — a structure that Chinese and Western defense analysts have said borrows from US military organization.
Xi is not just revolutionizing the PLA, but is making a series of moves that are transforming both China and the global order. He has abandoned reform architect Deng Xiaoping’s (鄧小平) injunction that China should hide its strength and bide its time. The waiting game is over.
Xi’s speeches are peppered with references to his “Chinese dream,” where an ancient nation recovers from the humiliation of foreign invasion and retakes its rightful place as the dominant power in Asia.
The effort includes signature shows of soft power: Xi’s multibillion-dollar Belt and Road Initiative to build a global trade and infrastructure network with China at its center, and his “Made in China 2025” plan to turn the country into a high-tech manufacturing giant.
However, the boldest stroke is his expansion of China’s hard power, through his remaking of the PLA, the world’s largest fighting force. At the core of this vision of national renewal is a loyal, corruption-free military that Xi demands must be prepared to fight and win.
His push to project power abroad was accompanied by a power play at home. Xi has purged more than 100 generals accused of corruption or disloyalty, the official Xinhua news agency has reported.
A raw demonstration of his authority came when state-run China Central Television a laudatory documentary series about the PLA, titled Strong Military.
In one scene in the 2017 series, an older man sits in a military court at a desk marked “defendant,” looking frail in a navy-blue civilian jacket. It is Guo Boxiong (郭伯雄), a former general and the most senior officer convicted in Xi’s purge. He reads his confession to charges of bribery from a sheaf of papers gripped in both hands.
“The Central Military Commission dealt with my case completely correctly,” says Guo, who had once served as vice chairman of the body. “I must confess my guilt and take responsibility for it.”
Guo was sentenced to life in prison.
In a series of stories, Reuters is exploring how the rapid and disruptive advance of Chinese hard power on Xi Jinping’s watch has ended the era of unquestioned US supremacy in Asia.
In just over two decades, China has built a force of conventional missiles that rival or outperform those in the US armory. China’s shipyards have spawned the world’s biggest navy, which rules the waves in East Asia.
Beijing can launch nuclear-armed missiles from an operational fleet of ballistic missile submarines, giving it a powerful second-strike capability.
The PLA is also fortifying posts across vast expanses of the South China Sea, while stepping up preparations to annex Taiwan, by force if necessary.
‘THE US COULD LOSE’
For the first time since Portuguese traders reached the Chinese coast five centuries ago, China has the military power to dominate the seas off its coast. Conflict between China and the US in these waters would be destructive and bloody, particularly a clash over Taiwan, serving and retired senior US officers have said.
Despite decades of unrivaled power since the end of the Cold War, there would be no guarantee that the US would prevail.
“The US could lose,” said Gary Roughead, cochair of a bipartisan review of the defense strategy that US President Donald Trump’s administration published in November last year. “We really are at a significant inflection point in history.”
A retired admiral, Roughead is no armchair theorist. As former chief of Naval Operations, he held the top job in the US Navy until 2011. His alarm reflects a growing view across the US defense establishment.
In their report, he and his colleagues issued a dire warning: The US faces a “national security crisis,” principally arising from growing Chinese and Russian military power.
“US military superiority is no longer assured, and the implications for American interests and American security are severe,” the panel said.
It is clear that Xi wants to bring the era of US dominance in Asia to an end.
“In the final analysis, it is for the people of Asia to run the affairs of Asia, solve the problems of Asia and uphold the security of Asia,” Xi said in a 2014 speech to foreign leaders on regional security.
The Chinese Ministry of National Defense, the US Indo-Pacific Command and the Pentagon did not respond to questions for this article or detailed summaries of its findings.
This account of Xi and the PLA — which despite the “army” in its name comprises all military branches — is based on interviews with 17 current and former military officers from Taiwan, China, the US and Australia. Many would only speak on condition of anonymity.
The account draws on interviews with Chinese officials and people with ties to the senior leadership in Beijing who have known Xi and his family for decades, and are familiar with his career as he rose through the CCP and government bureaucracy. It also relies on Chinese government publications describing Xi’s political thinking, his speeches and official documentaries showcasing his leadership of the military.
In Washington, the world’s pre-eminent military power is mobilizing to respond. After decades of seeking engagement in the expectation that Beijing would become a cooperative partner in world affairs, the US is treating China as a strategic competitor bent on displacing it as Asia’s dominant force.
Largely in reaction to this challenge, Washington is boosting defense spending, rebuilding its navy and urgently developing new weapons, particularly longer-range conventional missiles. It is expanding military ties with other regional powers, including Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Australia, Singapore and India.
It is also conducting an international diplomatic and intelligence campaign to counter China’s cyberattacks, traditional espionage and intellectual property theft. This campaign includes efforts to contain the global reach of Chinese telecoms Huawei (華為) and ZTE Corp (中興).
The confrontation comes as Trump’s administration is waging a tariff war aimed at reducing China’s massive trade surplus with the US. Whatever the outcome of the trade conflict, a graver risk is the possibility that the deeper tensions could boil over into an armed clash between Beijing and Washington and its allies in the hotly contested maritime zones off the Chinese coast.
UNEXPECTED RISE
The rise of the PLA is not all Xi’s doing. Long before he took power, the military had been transformed from the massive but rudimentary land force that swept Mao and his comrades, including Xi’s father, to victory over the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) in 1949.
Decades of steep increases in defense spending paid for an arsenal of high-tech weapons. Millions of soldiers were demobilized, but corruption became endemic.
Xi’s two predecessors, former Chinese presidents Jiang Zemin (江澤民) and Hu Jintao (胡錦濤), were civilians who took office without a network of support among PLA brass.
They fostered loyalty through patronage, pay raises and budget increases, Taiwanese and Chinese analysts and retired officers said.
Under the especially weak leadership of Hu, senior officers exploited their positions to siphon off money, particularly from the logistics and equipment budgets, they said, adding that rank buying became rampant.
The military hierarchy that Xi inherited had become a law unto itself under Hu, said Li Nan (李楠), a Chinese military expert at the National University of Singapore.
“It was out of control, in a sense,” Li said. “Now the power is centralized in the hands of Xi Jinping.”
Xi, a so-called princeling, grew up as a member of the CCP aristocracy, even though his family suffered separation and persecution in Mao’s chaotic Cultural Revolution.
His father, Xi Zhongxun (習仲勳), was a revolutionary military leader who became a top government official in the early years of communist rule. He was later purged in Mao’s upheavals, before emerging as a key leader of China’s market reforms in the 1980s.
Xi’s dramatic accumulation of power was unexpected. He took a low profile as he slowly worked his way up the ranks of the CCP and the state bureaucracy, multiple Chinese familiar with his early career have said.
His first job out of university in 1979 was serving in a junior post as a uniformed aide to General Geng Biao (耿?), then Chinese minister of national defense. Xi’s official biography records this three-year posting as “active duty.”
In this role, he had access to classified military documents, including files on the 1979 Chinese invasion of Vietnam, sources with ties to the leadership said.
He had to memorize hundreds of telephone numbers and was not allowed to rely on a telephone book, in case it was lost or stolen, they said.
He then began a series of provincial government and party postings. In these roles, his performance was relatively unremarkable.
For example, as governor of Fujian Province, he was obsessed with the bureaucratic routine of political study sessions, where officials reviewed CCP documents and speeches of senior leaders, people who knew him at the time said.
He was far from universally popular. He finished last in elections for alternate members of the 200-strong CCP Central Committee during the 15th National Congress in 1997.
This nondescript record appears to have worked in his favor. During his period as China’s paramount leader, Jiang handpicked Xi for senior office because the younger man was perceived to lack ambition, sources with close ties to the Chinese leadership said.
Xi was also thought to be a pliable candidate because he lacked a power base, one source said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
However, as China’s top leader, he has shown a willingness to impose radical change at the top of the party, government and military.
“When I talk to my mainland friends, they all say he is a risk-taker,” said Andrew Yang (楊念祖), former Taiwanese minister of national defense. “You never know what his next move will be.”
XI THE SOLDIER
From the beginning, Xi’s corruption purge and promotion of loyal officers made it clear that he had big plans for the PLA. Then, in the middle of 2015, he cut 300,000 mostly noncombat and administrative personnel before launching a sweeping overhaul of the military structure.
He broke up the four sprawling, Maoist-era “general departments” of the PLA that had become powerful, highly autonomous and deeply corrupt, Li said.
Xi replaced them with 15 new agencies that report directly to the Central Military Commission that he chairs.
He also scrapped the seven geographically based military regions and replaced them with five joint-service theater commands. These new regional commands, comparable to those that govern the US armed forces, are responsible for military operations and have a strong focus on combining air, land, naval and other capabilities of the Chinese armed forces to suit modern warfare.
Xi also promoted favored commanders, many of them officers that he knew in Fujian and Zhejiang provinces, where he served the bulk of his early career as an official, Chinese and Western observers of the PLA said.
Other commanders hail from his home province of Shaanxi or are fellow princelings.
At the 19th National Congress in 2017, Xi further tightened his grip over the top military leadership, paring the Central Military Commission from 11 members to seven and stacking it with loyalists. Xi knew most of them from Shaanxi and Fujian.
As he burnishes his military credentials, Xi draws on his early service in uniform. In speeches to military audiences, he describes himself as a soldier-turned-official, the Chinese media have reported.
In distinctive PLA camouflage fatigues, cap and combat boots, he has overseen some of the biggest military parades since the CCP’s 1949 victory. In the most recent of these displays, Xi received the troops’ salute without sharing the podium with the usual lineup of party leaders and veteran officials.
In a massive naval exercise in April last year, Xi boarded the guided-missile destroyer Changsha to review the Chinese fleet of 48 warships in the South China Sea. China Central Television showed the navy commander, Vice Admiral Shen Jinlong (沈金龍), and navy political commissar, Vice Admiral Qin Shengxiang (秦生祥), standing at attention as they reported to Xi and saluted. Xi then gave the order for the exercise to proceed.
Both navy chiefs are Xi proteges. Shen has been rapidly promoted under Xi, leapfrogging other, more senior officers, Chinese and Western analysts said.
Qin had worked closely with Xi in a top post at the Central Military Commission before his promotion in 2017 to his navy role, China’s official military media reported.
Xi was also in fatigues again in July 2017 at a massive military parade to mark the 90th anniversary of the PLA at the Zhurihe Training Base in Inner Mongolia. He received a salute from the parade commander, General Han Weiguo (韓衛國), an officer who served in Fujian while Xi was a party and government official in the province. Han has enjoyed a meteoric rise under Xi, being promoted to command China’s ground forces shortly after the parade.
“Xi Jinping is obsessed with military parades,” said Willy Lam (林和立), a Chinese University of Hong Kong professor and a veteran observer of personnel movements in China’s military and political circles. “He loves these demonstrations of raw power.”
As part of Xi’s martial image-building, the CCP’s propaganda machine portrays him as the leader responsible for a decisive pivot in China’s recovery from foreign conquest and colonial domination that began with the First Opium War in the middle of the 19th century.
In the opening scenes of the Strong Military documentary, Xi is shown boarding the guided missile destroyer Haikou at Shekou Port on Dec. 8, 2012, and sailing into the South China Sea for the first time since becoming party and military chief that year.
As Xi looks to the horizon through binoculars, the narrator says: “As the warship pierces the waves, Xi Jinping peers toward a vision obscured in the mist of history when, 170 years ago, Western powers came from the sea to open the door to China, beginning a bitter nightmare for ancient China.”
The nightmare ends, according to the documentary, with the CCP’s victory under Mao, and the periods of growing economic and military power under Deng, Jiang and Hu. With Xi in charge, the series shows, a heavily armed China is poised to recover its former glory.
PRESSURING TAIWAN
Propaganda aside, Xi is proving far more assertive than his most recent predecessors in employing China’s new military power.
In 2013, China began dredging and island-building in the disputed Spratly Islands (Nansha Islands, 南沙群島) in the South China Sea, an area in which Beijing has competing territorial claims with Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and Brunei.
Xi personally directed these moves, according to a July 2017 commentary in Study Times, the official mouthpiece of the CCP’s Central Party School.
“It is the equivalent of building a Great Wall at sea,” the commentary said.
Extensive fortification of these outposts, including missile batteries, means that China has virtually annexed a vast swathe of ocean.
Ahead of his May 30 appointment to head the US Indo-Pacific Command, Admiral Philip Davidson told a US congressional committee that China was capable of controlling the South China Sea in all scenarios, “short of war.”
Xi is also stepping up military pressure on Taiwan, Japan and India. Alongside a massive arsenal of missiles capable of striking Taiwan, Chinese naval and air forces conduct increasingly complex exercises that regularly encircle Taiwan.
These exercises are designed to intimidate Taiwan and wear down its forces, which must respond to these drills, some Taiwanese defense analysts said.
“They are obviously applying a lot of coercive power over Taiwan,” Yang said.
Beijing is determined to bring Taiwan under its control.
In Taipei, the Ministry of National Defense said that it would continue to maintain surveillance, and deploy aircraft and warships to “ensure the safety of our nation’s air and sea territory.”
Chinese naval and air forces are also increasing the tempo of deployments, exercises and patrols through the Japanese island chain.
Japan’s annual defense white paper last year said that China’s “unilateral escalation” of activities around Japan was arousing strong security concerns. Japanese interceptors scrambled 638 times in the past year against Chinese aircraft, the government reported this month, up almost 30 percent from the year before.
“China has expanded and intensified military activities not only in the East China Sea, but also in the Pacific Ocean and the seas around Japan,” the Japanese Ministry of Defense said. “These activities appear aimed at improving operational capability and bolstering China’s presence.”
Despite these assertive moves, there are still questions from inside the PLA about the capacity of Chinese forces to compete with the US and other advanced military powers. In numerous published commentaries, Chinese officers and strategists point to the PLA’s lack of experience in conflict, technological shortcomings and failure to introduce effective command and control.
Xi’s power grab and bold agenda also carry great risk for him personally, the CCP and China. There has been widespread speculation in China that the corruption crackdown in the military, and a parallel purge of party and government officials, is at least in part Xi’s response to a vicious, behind-the-scenes power struggle.
Rare evidence of this surfaced at a key gathering of top officials. On the sidelines of the 19th National Congress, then-China Securities Regulatory Commission chairman Liu Shiyu (劉士余) accused a group of senior officials deposed in the purge of plotting a coup, including the disgraced former Chinese Central Military Commission vice chairman Guo Boxiong.
Earlier, the official military newspaper had hinted at similar accusations, without citing evidence. Guo, who was imprisoned on corruption charges, could not be reached for comment. The Chinese government has not commented further on this allegation.
In bringing down so many powerful military and party leaders and their factions, Xi has made many dangerous enemies, people with ties to the leadership said.
Moreover, steep increases in military spending will become more difficult to sustain if the growth of the debt-burdened Chinese economy continues to slow.
Yet, Xi shows no sign of toning down his drive to galvanize the Chinese military. On Oct. 25 last year, he toured the Southern Theater Command in Guangzhou, the headquarters responsible for the contested South China Sea.
China Central Television showed Xi in fatigues and combat boots, striding through the command post with senior brass. Xi, state media reported, told officers to concentrate on “preparing for war and combat.”
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