“The fact that Xi Jinping has been able to cashier so many [People’s Liberation Army] elites since he assumed power…is a clear sign his position in the regime is unassailable,” James Char of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore told CNN last month, just after Xi’s removal of two senior generals from important command posts. The news outlet summarized the almost unanimous view of analysts: “Xi Has Absolute Control Over China’s Military.” 

But the narrative that Xi controls the military is almost certainly wrong. The purges, taken by almost all as proof of Xi’s power, in fact show the opposite. 

On the 24th of last month, China’s Ministry of National Defense, in a 30-second video, announced that two generals sitting on the Communist Party’s Central Military Commission, Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, were placed under investigation.  

Following the video’s release, PLA Daily, the main propaganda organ of the Chinese military, accused Zhang and Liu of “seriously trampling on and undermining the system of ultimate responsibility resting with the Central Military Commission chairman.” The chairman of that body, which controls the People’s Liberation Army, is Xi Jinping himself. 

Zhang’s removal was particularly stunning. He was China’s most senior uniformed officer and first vice chairman of the commission.  

Experts believe that Xi has to be in control if he had the power to remove Zhang and Liu. There is, of course, a surface logic to that belief.  

Yet Xi purged Zhang and Liu apparently because he could not control them. And it appears he cannot control the broader military either.  

A decade ago, Xi looked as if he had cemented control. The continual “corruption” purges carried out in the early years of his rule, and his major reorganization of the PLA in the middle of last decade, allowed him to install loyalists throughout the chain of command.  

Yet since then, China’s leader has been continually removing flag officers and then removing their replacements. If Xi were in such total command today, why did he have to remove so many officers over the past decade?  

There is also evidence that Xi’s adversaries in the military were responsible for at least some of the recent purges. For instance, it appears Zhang Youxia turfed out Gen. He Weidong, often described as Xi’s number-one enforcer in the military. Two other Xi loyalists, Adm. Miao Hua, head of personnel and ideological inspection, and Gen. Lin Xiangyang, commander of the all-important Eastern Theater Command, were also sacked.  

“The continuation of the purges is hard to explain if Xi dominates the political system because his supporters are now being purged,” scholar Charles Burton told me last July. “Sometimes the simplest explanations are the most credible. The simplest explanation is that Xi’s enemies—not Xi himself—removed Xi’s loyalists.”  

Burton’s point is consistent with the PLA Daily‘s explanation of why Zhang and Liu were removed: The generals had challenged Xi’s authority.  

There is now an apparent cycle of purges and counter-purges. Once purges gain momentum, they are, as evident in China and elsewhere, hard to stop.

Why? Purges carry costs for those who carry them out.  

Friends and supporters of those removed—Zhang Youxia was popular in the ranks—know they might be next and resist. In fact, there are widespread reports of unhappiness among senior officers over Zhang’s removal. Some did not attend the Central Military Commission’s New Year tribute to retired senior officers, avoiding Xi Jinping’s personal greeting.  

Xi also took special precautions before attending the event: Security personnel, wearing military uniforms, were spotted in the crowd. “Even in such a closed setting, a setting entirely composed of his own people, there were still a very large number of military security personnel present,” wrote analyst Jennifer Zeng on X. “Even his ‘own people’ all needed to be monitored at close range.” On the 10th, Xi gave his traditional New Year greeting to soldiers via video instead of in person, as has been his custom. 

Many reports of dissension in the ranks are unconfirmed. There is, however, one thing that is evident: The purges in China are intensifying, indicating that the Chinese military is in disarray.  

After the removal of Zhang and Liu, the seven-member Central Military Commission now has only two members, neither of whom are operational military officers. Those two are Xi Jinping himself and Gen. Zhang Shengmin, a political commissar. “The chain of command in the military is totally broken,” said Heng He, a China analyst and a commentator on Sound of Hope Radio, commenting on the removals of Zhang and Liu. “This never happened in the history of Communist rule.” 

Conventional wisdom continues to overstate Xi’s power. “In China, the CCP controls the gun,” wrote Joseph DeTrani, a former associate director of National Intelligence, “and Mr. Xi controls the CCP.”

That is the way the system is supposed to work, but that’s not the way it is working now. Xi’s continual removals of flag officers have not given him the control he obviously craves. 

Gordon G. Chang is the author of Plan Red: China’s Project to Destroy America and The Coming Collapse of China. Follow him on X @GordonGChang. 

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.