Why Xi Jinping teaches loyalty lessons to the PLA? 
2 months ago |

If the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has emerged as the most powerful military power after the US, full credit goes to the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) that has metamorphosed itself into a highly modernised and professional armed force. However, despite high professional military education (PME) and combat competency levels, the PLA is in continuous learning mode from President Xi Jinping. Among other things, Xi Jinping is harping on absolute loyalty from the PLA. While his reasons for being a ‘dissatisfied soul’ are not completely known, this is intriguing for the PLA entering 98th establishment year on 1st August. 

All paramount leaders of China have maintained close contacts with the PLA. Most of them also sought complete control over the PLA cadres, with variable degree of successes. Xi Jinping is only following the legacy of his predecessors. However, his personal association with the PLA stands on a different platform than his predecessors. For instance, Mao Ze Dong was an outright PLA man. He had grown up in the militia since the Yunnan days in 1920s and was in the forefront right from PLA’s establishment in 1927. Much of his authority lay in his front-end leadership of the PLA, particularly the long march (1934-36) that was pivotal in shoring up his support base within the PLA and established his authority as the supreme leader in due course. When Mao was running low on career graph due to differences with the CCP leadership and his own economic failures in late fifties and early sixties, he still had the courage to launch the Cultural Revolution that took away the winds beneath many established party leaders and once again established his supremacy. All this was possible only because of his complete grip over the PLA. 

Xi does not enjoy such privileges. He is not from the in-house PLA cadre and, therefore, there is always an inbuilt trust deficit between him and the PLA leadership. It is debatable if his assimilation process with the PLA is complete though he has been at the helm of affairs for more than 10 years. Xi has also complicated things due to his own mistakes. He has crowned himself for the third tenure, breaking the tradition set by his predecessors like Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao who retired after two full terms. Xi Jinping removed all the hurdles that came in his march towards the third tenure but it has rendered him relatively unpopular. He has a power hungry and usurper image.  

Xi probably has been planning for the consequences in very cool-headed manner. One of the objectives for his anti-corruption movement in the PLA was to purge all rivals, potential challengers as well as fence sitters within the PLA leadership. That movement had been relatively successful with the new PLA brass largely towing his trajectory. Xi has also been working on time-bound reforms and modernisation of the PLA. Manpower reduction and restructuring process is by and large complete. The theater command system, introduced in 2016, is working well now. Most importantly, he continues, rather vigorously, the tradition of an aggressive strategic culture that unnerves China’s neighbours but keeps the PLA in quite good mood. The grandstanding on Taiwan, for example, is quite lauded by the PLA that gets to display its huge investments in modernisation process, combat capabilities and high-tech weaponry. 

Xi Jinping, however, still perceives himself on shaky ground in the third tenure. Loyalty lessons, therefore, come handy for him in consolidating his grip over the PLA and on the CCP. The PLA cadres gets loyalty lessons in different ways. First, the political thought of Xi Jinping is being propagated as an essential reading for all the rank and file within the PLA. By insisting on his ‘distinct thought’, Xi is placing himself discreetly at par with Mao Ze Dong whose Red Book was a popular handbook for the PLA cadres. Concurrently, the political thought of Mao has been consigned to archival history and very little credence is accorded to it in official discourse. Since 2018, Xi Jinping Thought is officially included in the Constitution of the PRC.  

Second, Xi is also promoting PLA’s political loyalty to the party. Addressing a PLA meeting in June 2024, he demanded efforts towards ‘having top-level officers who are loyal, clean, responsible, and capable in all aspects’. He called on senior military officers to shoulder responsibilities entrusted by the party and the people to keep strengthening the armed forces. These are generic and ambiguous statements. One can also interpret them as loyalty towards Xi Jinping in person.  

Third, Xi is also promoting the idea of oneness in almost every aspect of public life with a nationalistic fervor. Thus, the PLA cadres, among others, are being encouraged to think in terms of ‘one country (China inclusive of Taiwan), one people (Han), one ideology (Socialism with Chinese characteristics to be read as Xi Jinping thought), one party (unquestioned leadership of CCP), and one leader (goes without saying – Xi Jinping)’. Every word has a deep connotation and Xi is mobilising PLA cadres on these themes. However, at the end of the day, all of them boil down to one thing – loyalty to one leader – himself.   

Xi is not satisfied with his dictates. He is deeply involved in all promotions and transfers of the PLA top brass. He visits PLA sites quite frequently and interacts with them directly, something that was rare during Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao’s tenure. In the process, the normal chain of command and control often is diluted. 

Insistence on political loyalty is bound to affect the PLA’s morale and encourage more politicisation of the cadres in an age when professionalism should be the buzzword for military discipline. Xi Jinping, the ruthless, would survive the fallout but it may damage the PLA’s reputation and make his successor’s life difficult as and when he emerges.  

Note: The author is in the Indian Defence Accounts Service. Views are personal



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Views expressed above are the author’s own.



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