Source: Libertarian Institute
by Joseph Solis-Mullen
“In late January 2026, China’s Ministry of National Defense announced investigations into two of the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) most senior officers …. These investigations capped a wave of high-level purges that began in 2023 and steadily hollowed out the PLA’s senior leadership. At one point, the CMC, China’s supreme military decision-making body, was reduced in functional terms to Xi himself as chairman and the anti-corruption chief Zhang Shengmin as vice chairman. … To understand what these developments mean, one must understand the architecture of Chinese politics. China is not merely an authoritarian state. It is a Leninist party-state in which the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) dominates every lever of power, the PLA functions as the party’s armed wing, and central authority increasingly overrides provincial discretion. The recent purges illuminate not dysfunction, but design.” (02/19/26)