The Purges Within China’s Military Are Even Deeper Than You Think

CSIS Study: Xi's Military Purges: Bonny Lin, Brian Hart, Leon Li, Suyash Desai, Truly Tinsley, Linda Yang, Feifei Hung

Over the last few years, Chinese leader Xi Jinping has waged an internal political war within his own military, conducting unprecedented purges of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Due to the opaque nature of China’s political system, there has not previously been a systematic assessment of these purges. To shed light on the scope and impact of the PLA purges, the CSIS China Power Project constructed the CSIS Database of Chinese Military Purges, which contains detailed information on over 100 PLA senior officers who have been purged or potentially purged since 2022. This report summarizes key insights from that dataset and reveals that the PLA purges are far more extensive than previously understood.

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