Before two Chinese vessels, a People’s Liberation Army (PLA) Navy guided-missile destroyer and a Chinese Coast Guard cutter (converted from a PLA Navy corvette), collided while chasing a Philippine Coast Guard patrol boat within the Philippines’ Exclusive Economic Zone at the West Philippine Sea, the New York Times was already raising suspicion that China’s military is unravelling.
The Times’ Chris Buckley, reporting from Taipei, pointed out that while China’s military looks very strong outwardly — with its naval ships venturing farther across the oceans and its nuclear force growing by about 100 warheads every year — it is actually experiencing its most serious leadership crisis in years.
Three of the seven seats on the Central Military Commission (CMC), the Communist Party council that controls the armed forces, are vacant, he said. Members were arrested or simply disappeared. President Xi Jinping is the commission’s chairman. Among those gone are Gen. He Weidong, the second most senior career officer on the Commission, Adm. Miao Hua, who oversaw political work in the military, and Gen. Li Shangfu, the former Minister of National Defense and State Councilor.
In addition to the three, around two dozen, if not more, senior PLA officers and executives in the armaments industry have also disappeared from official public events and mentions, according to the Times report, quoting a recent tally by the Jamestown Foundation, a D.C.-based think tank created to inform policymakers about events and trends in China, among other places, that are of strategic importance.
A common denominator among the around two dozen other desaparecidos, according to the think tank, is that they were all previously placed under investigation for unspecified “serious violations of discipline,” a phrase that often refers to corruption or disloyalty in the context of Beijing; which could also mean that Gen. He Weidong, Adm. Miao Hua, and Gen. Li Shangfu too face the same issue.
What’s interesting is that all three officials rose unusually quickly under President Xi Jinping’s administration.
Gen. He was Xi’s co-chairman in the commission and a member of 20th Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party, which Xi controls through his concurrent roles as Party General Secretary and, with Gen. He by his side, the CMC Chairman.
Admiral Miao, on the other hand, is widely regarded as a member of Xi Jinping’s Fujian faction. His appointment to head the CMC’s Political Work Department was personally backed by Xi, underscoring his role in ensuring ideological loyalty across the armed forces. He also served on key party bodies that enforce discipline and propagate central directives within the military.
Gen. Li, for his part, was the public face of the PLA — a role designed by Xi to project China’s military strength. Xi relied on Li for high-level engagements, including attempts to restore military communications with the United States in 2023.
For Xi to lose his three top officials in the CMC and, by extension, the PLA, shows an uncommon degree of top-level upheaval and, in the words of Ely Ratner, assistant secretary of defense to the erstwhile Biden administration, could have already “affected the working of the bureaucracy.”
Worse, it facilitates “broader skepticism about the readiness of the Chinese military within the leadership.”
This upheaval at the top, coupled with the need for Xi to show that he is still in control, could explain the escalation in the level of aggression China is showing through the tactics it employs—from water cannons to intentional ramming of ships, from sending only Chinese Coast Guard and Chinese Maritime Militia boats to now employing Navy missile-guided destroyers in its only actual theater of conflict right now—the South China Sea.
What does this mean for the Philippines? Both danger and opportunity.
It represents a condition of danger because conflict escalation tends to move upward, according to conflict studies researcher Friedrich Glasl, and threatening strategies usually intensify into limited blows and sanctions; where parties move from issuing threats to actually inflicting controlled harm on one another in an effort to weaken or incapacitate the other side.
However, it is also an opportunity because Beijing’s internal struggles indicate a dire need for face-saving, which in turn can be an opening for backchannel dialogues aimed at de-escalating the tension, if resolving the actual bone of contention is not yet on the table.