No One Left Behind
New Purges in the Military + Sharing a New Paper on China's Military-Industrial Statecraft.
Guarding the Great Wall: Old Problems, New Almost-Purges
Anushka Saxena
On June 27, 2026, the Standing Committee of the 14th National People’s Congress (NPC) published Announcement No. 18 (〔十四届〕第十八号), terminating the deputy qualifications of a long list of officials — among them the disgraced former Xinjiang Party boss Ma Xingrui. Six of the names, however, belong to serving or recently serving PLA officers, and each was stripped of their seat by the Military Representatives’ Congress (军人代表大会) of their unit.
Regular readers of this newsletter will recognise the choreography. The termination of an NPC deputy’s qualification is the visible first domino — it was true of the nine taken away in October 2025, and of Central Military Commission (CMC) seniors Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli thereafter. The seat goes first, then expulsion from the Party, then transfer to the military procuratorate. So while Beijing has, as of writing, formally charged none of these six with anything, the pattern is unambiguous enough that I would not bet on reprieve.
Who, then, are the six?
The biggest name is Xu Xueqiang (许学强). He’s an Air Force general, current Director of the CMC Equipment Development Department, and concurrently Commander-in-Chief of China’s Manned Space Programme. I flagged him by name back in January 2023 as an individual who may have worked closely with Li Shangfu and Zhang Youxia. His absence from the Fourth Plenum in October 2025, and subsequently from the Shenzhou-21 send-off, the Fujian carrier’s commissioning, and December’s Central Economic Work Conference, already conveyed what needed to be conveyed by appearances, or rather, disappearances.
His fall hits an ominous trifecta. Three consecutive custodians of China’s armaments apparatus — Zhang Youxia at the old General Armaments Department and then the new EDD, Li Shangfu at the EDD, and now Xu at the EDD — have all gone down. The EDD is where the procurement scandal began in July 2023. It is the department that procures and assesses weapons for the PLA, and the SOEs that supply them, such as AVIC, CNNC, and CAEP, whose heads were dismissed only in February 2026, are at the two ends of the same corrupt transaction.
Next, two of the six purged are leaders of key support arms of the PLA, one of which emerged from the April 2024 dismemberment of the Strategic Support Force (SSF). Zhang Minghua (张明华), first commander of the Cyberspace Force (网络空间部队), saw his deputyship removed. In addition, so did Wang Kangping (王抗平), commander of the Joint Logistics Support Force. It is notable that Zhang was the deputy chief of staff of the SSF since 2018, and seems to have stayed out of the crossfire during the unit’s disbandment. Now, he is under the radar for reasons unknown, but likely linked to either inefficiencies while in office at the SSF, or newly discovered corruption during his participation in the space equipment management programmes. The proof of said participation is him being in attendance during the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (SASTIND)’s meetings on the Chang’e-4 mission.
The fourth candidate, Li Fengbiao (李凤彪), now Political Commissar of the Western Theatre Command, was himself the SSF’s commander from 2019. Ju Qiansheng, the last commander of the SSF, had a shaky end, and it seems like his predecessor from the Air Force has no respite to look forward to, as well.
Read together, the SSF’s 2024 breakup looks less like tidy reform and more like an organisation whose leadership lineage was already under a cloud. The forces meant to deliver Xi’s informationised, jointly-networked military are now also losing their chiefs. One can argue, as I have before, that purging corrupt officials makes room for cleaner, and definitely more loyal ones. It is harder to argue that decapitating the sitting commanders of one’s cyber and joint logistics forces in the same week leaves the informatisation and modernisation projects unharmed.
The Air Commissars
The fifth and sixth individuals, Guo Puxiao (郭普校) and Yin Hongxing (尹红星), are respectively the sitting Political Commissar of the PLA Air Force, and the sitting Political Commissar of the Southern Theatre Command Army. Guo was once the youngest active-duty full general in the force. That the political commissars, whose entire job is to guarantee the Party’s absolute command over the gun, are themselves being hauled off is its own quiet irony.
By the way, both Li Fengbiao and Guo Puxiao rose through the 15th Airborne Corps: Li as division and then corps commander, Guo as its political commissar. Both subsequently passed through the Central Theatre Command, including the abovementioned Li Fengbiao, who was the TC’s first deputy commander and chief of staff. But I am unsure if there are threads pertaining to the targetting of patron-client networks to unpack here.
Some data suggests that over the past three years, the deputy qualifications of 19 full generals (上将), 17 lieutenant generals (中将) and 6 major generals (少将) have been terminated. That tally, if accurate, is simply staggering for a force that fields only a few dozen serving full generals at any given moment.
So where does it leave us?
Xi is plainly willing to hollow out the whole deck to rebuild a clean one before the 21st Party Congress in 2027. Removing this many commanders at once also cannot help cohesion, trust, or the rehearsed jointness that would matter in a combat operation on the horizon. Further, it complicates the will to fight even where it leaves the material basis intact.
Whether the rebuilt house stands stronger, or merely a house of cards — less credible, more frightened, and a little too red — is a predicament yet to unravel.
For a full picture of this continuing story, please do check out ChinMil Tracker. It is a comprehensive dashboard outlining all you need to know on corruption, loyalty & purges in China’s Military and Defence Industry.
Worldview Weekly: China’s Arms Exports and Their Post-Mortem Results
Anushka Saxena
China has well established its economic power, and cemented its status as the factory of the world. In President Xi Jinping’s conception, building expansive military power goes hand in hand with economic prowess. That belief has manifested on two fronts — modernising the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to become a world-class force by 2049, which requires a military-industrial complex (MIC) that is innovative, self-reliant, and can provide for both the PLA, and the emerging global market for a diversified supply of arms and ammunition.
My latest paper for the Takshashila Institution aims to assess the paradox posed by Beijing’s rise as a major arms exporter and the internal and external deficiencies in its arms trade engagements. Assessing this dynamic is vital for three reasons. Firstly, from a global perspective, China’s endeavour to advance the military-industrial complex and statecraft is not a standalone commercial enterprise but rather a broad project intertwined with flagship diplomatic and monetary initiatives, such as the Global Security Initiative and the Belt and Road Initiative. It is further empowered by a robust domestic legislative framework and financial support from the party-state, which protect Chinese business interests abroad and subsidise costs for a clientele of developing economies.
Secondly, countries attempting to navigate US-China competition cannot do so without factoring in the fact that Chinese arms exports are a central pillar of the broader contest over technology, economic advancement and military modernisation. This is especially important given contemporary US government efforts to impose heavy sanctions and restrictions on Chinese firms that back or are backed by Military-Civil Fusion (MCF). This brings many privately owned or dual-use component suppliers onto their radar, warranting compliance scrutiny for all economies globally.
Thirdly, for India, China’s weapons exports and defence partnerships directly impact its regional standing and security policy. Events from the four-day hostilities of May 2025 saw Pakistan combat India using weapons systems and platforms heavily imported from China. Keeping track of similar Chinese footprints in the security and defence apparatuses of not just Pakistan but also other regions enables Indian thinkers and decision-makers to respond promptly and with informed judgement.
Executive Summary
Two weapons systems China has exported widely, consistently emerge as deficient across multiple buyers — the NORINCO VT-4 Main Battle Tank and the CASC CH-4B combat drone. The VT-4, which Thailand and Nigeria both deploy, has repeatedly faced thermal and metallurgical defects. The CH-4B fleets of Jordan, Iraq, and Algeria have experienced crashes, offloading incidents, and groundings.
Importer trends speak to a clientele of partially dependent, geographically concentrated, developing-world consumers. Yet, even as some buyers like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan continue to engage in new contracts, consumers continue to diversify or indigenise. Examples include Jordan selling off its CH-4Bs, Nigeria and Kenya turning to South African, Russian, and American platforms, and Myanmar grounding its aircraft.
Three factors are likely to complicate Beijing’s arms export trajectory. These are the likely post-Ukraine resurgence of Russian and American exporters; the widening net of the US BIS and Department of War designations of Chinese military-industrial entities; and notable operational failures and serviceability lacunae, that may discourage the kind of deeply intertwined defence ties that bind China to Pakistan, or India to Russia.
Check out the full paper here, and leave any comments!
Eye on China is a weekly newsletter curated by the Indo-Pacific Studies Programme at The Takshashila Institution, a public policy think-tank based out of Bengaluru, India.
Reading these pieces together, I wonder if "conversion efficiency" is becoming the right way to think about China.
The recurring question isn't whether China possesses resources such as industrial capacity, engineers, capital, technology, or political will. It plainly does.
The question is how efficiently it converts those inputs into military capability, frontier AI, reliable weapons systems, or geopolitical influence.
Military-Civil Fusion is an attempt to improve that conversion. The AI piece showed that China has narrowed the model gap despite a widening chip gap, but still faces deployment bottlenecks. This week's articles point to frictions elsewhere: corruption disrupting military modernization and quality issues limiting the effectiveness of arms exports.
Every system has friction. The interesting analytical question isn't whether China is ten feet tall or secretly collapsing, but where those frictions are and whether they're shrinking or growing over time.