More ‘red,’ more capable and focused on Taiwan: Xi cements his grip on PLA

Xi Jinping, fresh off securing an unprecedented third term as China’s leader, has reshuffled the country's top military leadership, highlighting his emphasis on his generals' political loyalty as much as their professional competence.

While the appointments made at the recent Chinese Communist Party congress point to efforts to ramp up military modernization, they also signal Beijing’s intention to expand military diplomacy and increase readiness for a potential military operation against Taiwan as cross-strait tensions escalate.

Xi has surrounded himself with loyalists not only in the powerful Politburo Standing Committee — the party’s top echelon — but also in the Central Military Commission (CMC), the country’s top military decision-making and command body.

With the move, the 69-year old Xi, who heads both organizations, aims to further strengthen his grip on power and enhance political loyalty in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) at a time when the country faces what it perceives as an increasingly threatening external security environment shaped by its intensifying geopolitical competition with the United States.

“Xi will continue to control the PLA, and the military will likely continue to receive generous funding to carry out a growing set of duties necessary for national security,” said Timothy Heath, a defense researcher at Rand Corp.

Despite a long list of daunting internal and external challenges, the recent party congress indicated that Beijing will continue pursuing an assertive foreign and defense policy, particularly with regard to Taiwan. Xi used a key report at the meeting to reiterate that China would never renounce the use of force in resolving “the Taiwan question,” while also warning that his country must be prepared for “strong winds, high waves and even dangerous storms.”

At the same time, Xi has pledged to accelerate the PLA’s transformation into a “world-class military,” with some Western commentators claiming that this will likely be his most important near-term goal for the military in his third term.

Loyalty, trust and experience

To help him navigate these security challenges, the Chinese leader selected two experienced generals as the CMC’s first- and second-ranked vice chairmen: Gens. Zhang Youxia and He Weidong, respectively.

The 72-year-old Zhang, a long-time personal acquaintance of Xi, is by far the oldest member of the Politburo, well beyond the informal retirement age of 68. At the same time, he is one of the few remaining PLA officers with experience in China’s 1979 border war with Vietnam, the last major conflict Beijing was involved with.

“Xi values political loyalty to himself as much as professional competence among his generals,” said James Char, a China expert at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore. “In breaking with norms by retaining Zhang, Xi is killing two birds with one stone: Ensuring that the PLA’s top soldier is someone well-versed in war operations but also politically reliable.”

Meanwhile, He, who became the first CMC vice chairman in decades to be promoted to the post without having been on the party’s Central Committee, previously oversaw the PLA’s Eastern Theater Command, which is responsible for military operations involving Taiwan.

Brian Hart, a fellow with the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ China Power Project, pointed out that both this command and its predecessor had been noticeably underrepresented on past CMCs. Hart believes that He’s selection may reflect “a desire among the leadership to have a vice chairman with experience on Taiwan issues” who can increase PLA readiness for a potential cross-Strait conflict.

Other new selections for the CMC — Gens. Liu Zhenli and Li Shangfu — have less Taiwan experience.

Still, Liu, a combat veteran of a 1986-87 border clash with Vietnam, was previously commander of the PLA ground force, while Li was a deputy commander of the PLA Strategic Support Force and has spent most of his career in military space operations.

The two remaining military members, Adm. Miao Hua and Gen. Zhang Shengmin, rose through the PLA’s political commissar and discipline inspection tracks, and have no experience in operational command positions.

“Xi values advice from those he personally knows and trusts,” said Joel Wuthnow, an expert on Chinese military affairs at the Washington-based National Defense University. “Second, he values broad expertise. He Weidong spent much of his career focusing on Taiwan, but the others bring different kinds of expertise, including experience in service headquarters, different theater commands and science and technology.

However, while this new CMC lineup may reflect Beijing’s growing focus on preparations for a Taiwan operation, it also overrepresents the army and leaves out the air force entirely, raising questions about how the new members can help shape a joint force integrated by digital technologies.

“The decision to backtrack by filling the CMC with army men is surprising,” Hart said. “Naval and air forces will be crucial in a Taiwan conflict, so the absence of CMC members with operational experience in those areas is significant.”

Nuclear expansion and ‘intelligentized warfare’

While last weekend’s party congress, a twice-a-decade event, did not indicate any major changes in the overall direction of the PLA, Xi’s report to the body constituted the most detailed public “to-do list” for the PLA in a party document since 2013, according to David Finkelstein, vice president and director of the China and Indo-Pacific Security Affairs Division at the CNA think tank.

“Depending on how you count them, the report identifies between 30 and 40 specific tasks for the PLA,” he said.

These tasks continue and add to a reform program that began several years ago, Finkelstein noted, adding that the party ultimately wants a military that is “more ‘red,’ more joint, and more expeditionary.”

Meia Nouwens, a Chinese military modernization expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said that an important element of the congress was the tone of Xi’s report and the specific areas it mentioned for PLA improvement.

For instance, one of the tasks referenced by Xi was the need to build “a strong strategic deterrence system,” which speaks to the ongoing expansion of China’s nuclear force as well as other improving tools of deterrence, including in the space and cyber arenas.

This follows a warning by the Pentagon in its annual report on Chinese military power that Beijing was expanding its nuclear weapon capabilities much faster than previously estimated.

Another area the new CMC is likely to prioritize is advanced military capabilities. The PLA is still in the midst of reforms that began in late 2015, and has been tasked with pursuing a “double construction” approach of mechanization and “informatization” to concurrently upgrade and promote digitization.

“In benchmarking itself against the U.S. military, it is laboring to adopt ‘informationized warfare,’ but also planning for the next phase of its modernization, which it has termed ‘intelligentized warfare,’” Char said. The latter will incorporate the militarization of the so-called fourth industrial revolution, which encompasses artificial intelligence, big data, man-machine interfacing, autonomous unmanned systems and 5G networking.

While the PLA posture remains focused on Taiwan, its duties are expanding in the cyberdomain and along routes with Belt and Road initiative countries.

The incoming PLA leadership is also expected to increase efforts in China’s military-to-military diplomacy with strategically located countries — especially those from developing nations — to extend the number of Beijing-friendly facilities into the Southwest Pacific and Indian Ocean, according to Char.

Can a Taiwan invasion be ruled out?

Char said that the PLA is well aware of its operational shortcomings and that it continues to face challenges in the areas of logistics, standards and training, as well as in military doctrine and integration of unmanned capabilities. It also knows it does not possess the capability — both in terms of personnel and transport equipment — to launch an armed invasion of Taiwan in the near-to-medium term.

While Beijing hopes to eventually take the self-ruled island, war at this point would be a dangerous gambit, said Rand’s Health.

“Other priorities are more pressing, so for now, the government seems poised to continue harassing and pressuring Taiwan,” he said.

However, not everyone agrees with this assessment.

Malcolm Davis, a China military expert at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, has warned that this does not mean a Taiwan invasion should be ruled out before the end of Xi’s third term — a view shared by some high-ranking U.S. officials, including navy chief Adm. Mike Gilday.

“I think that Xi's speech and the fact that he needs to deliver visible progress on unification with Taiwan within the next five-year term, suggests that China won't push any Taiwan operation back into the 2030s,” Davis said, adding that the argument that an invasion would occur as late as 2049 “is now no longer tenable.”

He believes such a move is much more likely to occur this decade, perhaps between 2024 and 2027, which is when the next party Congress is due to be held.

“Xi will need to deliver a big win — especially if he's challenged by domestic problems that look set to get worse.”

This means that the PLA may be racing to complete reforms and modernization to that end.

“A key issue is how the U.S. and its allies will interpret Chinese developments in terms of preparations for an invasion,” Davis said. “China will be watching these developments and will respond to any suggestion that Taiwan is strengthening relations with the U.S., Australia and Japan — so that may drive Beijing's timeline as much as the PLA modernization and reforms."