Xi Jinping Tames The PLA, Says He Expects Absolute Loyalty To The Communist Party

Chinese President Xi Jinping has begun his second five-year term ordering the country's 2.3-million-strong military, the world's largest, to be loyal to the ruling Communist Party and intensify its combat-readiness by focusing on how to win wars.

The once-in-a-five-year Congress of the Communist Party endorsed Jinping's leadership of the party, the military and the presidency this week, and approved his ideology to be written into the Constitution, elevating him on par with modern China's founder-chairman Mao Zedong and his successor Deng Xiaoping.

Jinping began his second tenure yesterday (26 October) by holding a meeting of top military officials, who are regarded as the primary source of power base. Jinping, who heads the powerful Central Military Commission (CMC), the overall high command of the Chinese military, is the only civilian leader in the body which is otherwise packed with top-most officials of the armed forces.

The new CMC line-up which was unveiled on Wednesday (25 October) will be led by a group of seven, down from the 11 members who headed its operations before.

Earlier reports said Jinping, who consolidated his power in the last five years with a massive anti-corruption campaign, in which over a million officials were punished, wanted to shrink the Standing Committee of the party to five from seven. But apparently, he did not succeed as other groups in the party headed by former leaders pressed for the status quo to include their nominees in the highest-ranking body bringing in a semblance of balance in power equations.

In the last night’s meeting of top military officials, some high-ranking officials were conspicuously absent, Hong Kong-based South China Morning Post reported.

It appeared from the state-run CCTV report that two top generals, the former chief of general staff, General Fang Fenghui, and director of the political work department, General Zhang Yang, were absent. Both Fang and Zhang were CMC members in Jinping’s first term, but they were left off the list of PLA delegates to this month’s Congress.

Earlier the two generals were taken away on the same day last month as part of a corruption investigation, the Post report said.

Defence Ministry spokesman Ren Guoqiang said yesterday (26 October) that Jinping's plan to strengthen the military would be fully implemented and his authority would be upheld. Jinping asked the PLA officers to learn and implement the spirit of the just-concluded Nineteenth CPC National Congress by following the road of building a strong army with Chinese characteristics and promoting the modernisation of a national defence and the army. “We should strive to fully transform the people's armed forces into a world-class military by the mid-21st century,” Jinping said.

He said that during the past five years, the CMC has endeavoured to build an army that follows the command of the CPC, capable of winning battles and has an excellent style of work, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.

During his previous tenure, Jinping carried out widespread reforms of the military including reconfiguring the command structure, slashed three lakh troops from the 2.3-million-troop-member military, cut the size of the army to a million, and made the Navy more powerful to push China's influence abroad.

With an over $141 billion-dollar annual budget, the Chinese military is next only to the US regarding defence spending. Unlike other countries, the military in China functions under the party and not under the government. (PTI)