More Red but Still Expert: Party-Army Relations Under Xi Jinping

Abstract

Xi Jinping has encouraged the People’s Liberation Army to be able to ‘fight and win wars’ while remaining ‘absolutely loyal’ to the Chinese Communist Party. This latter focus was the result of problems of excessive autonomy invested in the PLA under Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s, which manifested in military secrecy, corruption, and questions of ideological commitment. Xi has attempted to enhance party control (and his own authority as the ‘core’ of the party) through a multifaceted political strategy that includes centralization of power under his control, renewed ideological campaigns, and improved internal control mechanisms. Nevertheless, Xi is unlikely to meet this standard because the military remains fundamentally a self-policing organization with almost no genuine civilian party oversight. This means that the prospects for party-army tensions and even crises remain and could grow in the post-Xi era.