Book from the People's Liberation Army Conference
Stabilizing the Boat: Revisiting Party-Army Relations under Xi Jinping
Volume forthcoming in late May.
This chapter analyzes Xi Jinping’s strategy for strengthening control over the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), focusing on the ways in which he catered to the interests of senior officers, politically influential subgroups, and the military writ large during a period of disruptive change.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
MAIN ARGUMENT
Portrayals of Xi’s leadership of the PLA have focused on purges of political rivals and an anticorruption campaign to intimidate those who might oppose his plans. However, this focus on coercion overlooks the broader political strategy that Xi used to consolidate his power and push through ambitious reforms. That strategy included protecting the careers of senior officers who supported his agenda, allowing the ground forces to retain a high degree of influence despite losing manpower, and granting the military as a whole respect, resources, and autonomy rather than overturning basic patterns of civil-military relations in place since the 1980s. Public data, including leadership biographies, budgets, resource allocation, and Xi’s own activities, shows galvanized support at the individual, subgroup, and institutional levels, with significant ramifications for the party’s ability to control the military.
POLICY IMPLICATIONS
- Satisfying the interests of key constituencies in the PLA means that party-army relations are relatively stable; open military discontent with Xi’s leadership of the sort witnessed in other autocratic societies is unlikely.
- Needing buy-in from individual and corporate interests in the PLA could restrict the scope for further reforms, especially in areas that would require deeper changes in organizational culture.
- A political imperative to respect PLA autonomy means that corruption could continue to flourish and allow the military to operate without a high level of central supervision.
- The PLA will likely receive continued budget increases despite growing economic headwinds, which is a result both of Xi’s views of a darker security environment and his need to protect military equities.
Joel Wuthnow is a Senior Research Fellow in the Center for the Study of Chinese Military Affairs within the Institute for National Strategic Studies at National Defense University. He is also an Adjunct Professor in the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and a Nonresident Fellow at the National Bureau of Asian Research.
This chapter represents only the views of the author and not those of the National Defense University, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. government. The author thanks Jeremy Rausch for invaluable research assistance and Brittney Farrar, Ben Frohman, Phillip Saunders, and Andrew Taffer for their useful feedback.