The Chinese Communist Party concluded its fifth plenum this week with a display of internal chaos unseen since the days of Mao Zedong: a record 33 full and alternate members of the Central Committee were expelled, 16 of them senior generals in the People's Liberation Army, according to reporting from Breitbart and The Guardian. Only 279 of the 376 leaders named at the 2022 Party Congress attended the gathering that began Sunday — meaning more than a quarter of the original cohort were gone, many purged in corruption investigations.
The carnage inside the People's Liberation Army is the story. The seven-man Central Military Commission, the ruling body of China's armed forces, now has just two members left: Xi Jinping himself and Zhang Shengmin, the military's anti-graft tsar, who was promoted to the Politburo this week and is now the only military member of that senior leadership body. The other five seats are empty.
Among those purged were Lt. Gen. Zhong Shaojun, the last director of the CMC General Office, and Lt. Gen. Fang Yongxiang, who succeeded him in that post. Breitbart reported that both were decorated veterans who fought in China's war against Vietnam in the late 1970s. Zhong had been a close political ally of Xi for 25 years and was his top lieutenant in the PLA for much of that time. He rose to General Office director in 2017 — then fell from grace in 2024. Fang replaced him, then vanished during the fourth plenum last October. Both were accused of "disciplinary violations" and formally drummed out of the Party this week.
The purge also reached beyond the military. Zhang Youxia, the former second-in-command in China's military hierarchy whose rank was second only to Xi's, was confirmed expelled, as was Ma Xingrui, the former party secretary for Xinjiang.
Neil Thomas, a senior fellow at the Asia Society think tank, posted on X that the empty seats "underscore the plenum's focus on Xi's vision of strict internal discipline." That is the official framing. The unofficial one: Xi appears to be systematically removing anyone who could conceivably challenge him, and the campaign has intensified in recent years to reach officials at the very top of the party and the military.
Xi has acknowledged the campaign openly, saying earlier this year that the party must uproot "sick trees" and that the fight against corruption was a "never-ending journey." The Guardian also noted that questions have been raised about whether the campaign is a tool to remove political rivals or punish disloyalty.
The timing matters. The fifth plenum is the fifth time party leadership has assembled since the last major Party Congress in 2022. The next Congress is set for the fall of 2027, when Xi is expected to extend his open-ended leadership for another five years. Mao was the only leader of Communist China to hold power for more than four terms — a threshold Xi will cross at that next Congress.
The absence rate at this week's meeting is the highest since the Mao era, a period notorious for the chairman's constant sackings of perceived rivals. That comparison is not being made by Xi's critics alone; it is drawn from the Guardian's reporting on the scale of the expulsions.
What it means for the world is straightforward: the army Xi is expected to command in any Taiwan contingency is run by an officer corps that has just watched 16 of its most senior figures disappear in a single round of purges. The PLA's command structure under the CMC has been gutted, and the purge has already taken out several top generals over the past few months. Whether Xi's hold on the military is strengthened or weakened by this remains an open question — but an army whose leadership cannot survive a party meeting is not a stable instrument of national power.
Our Take
Patriots, look at what this actually means. For years, the establishment media and the foreign-policy blob have told Americans that China is a disciplined, monolithic machine marching toward dominance. What this week's plenum shows is a dictator devouring his own generals. Zhong Shaojun was Xi's top military lieutenant for 25 years, and Xi fed him to the wolves. Fang lasted barely a year in the same seat before vanishing. When the second-most powerful military figure in a country can be erased in a single purge cycle, that's not strength — that's a regime terrified of its own officers.
Ask yourself the question the legacy media in Beijing-adjacent think tanks won't: what happens to a military command structure that has been hollowed out from the top down before it is ever asked to fight? Xi is scheduled to cross Mao's four-term threshold at the 2027 Party Congress. Mao purged rivals constantly too — because absolute power built on purges is always one knife away from the wrong back. The United States should be watching this PLA collapse closely, and not just for Taiwan. A wounded, paranoid regime with a gutted officer corps is unpredictable. The lesson for America is simple: never trust a communist party that eats its own.
