Harsh V. Pant, Atul Kumar

On January 24, China announced that its two top military officers, Generals Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli, were placed under investigation for violating party discipline and law. They are accused of “seriously trampling the Chairman Responsibility System,” i.e., directly defying President Xi Jinping’s supreme authority and damaging the Party and the People’s Liberation Army (PLA)’s combat capability. The speed and severity of the investigation reflect Xi’s drive to remove the last bits of independent authority in China – a purge aimed at pre-empting potential ‘mountain-tops’ in the PLA, ahead of next year’s leadership renewal at the 21st Party Congress. The key question is, what does this purge mean for China’s defence policy? And, how will it impact India’s security, especially along the Line of Actual Control (LAC)?

A Difficult Choice

Zhang, the fallen general, is a princeling, Xi’s childhood friend and a close collaborator during the latter’s rule since 2012. Long regarded as seasoned military professionals, Zhang and Liu belong to the PLA’s old guard, humbled by their combat experience in Vietnam. Predictably, they have not been able to fully share and align with Xi’s sense of urgency over the PLA’s accelerated buildup for a Taiwan contingency. In Xi’s book, as Politburo member Li Hongzhong mentions, “Loyalty that is not absolute is absolute disloyalty”. Therefore, this purge was inevitable.

Nevertheless, this action has created concealed anxiety within the Communist Party. Beijing has moved swiftly, employing multiple methods, even media drip-feeds alleging grave, unpatriotic conduct, to contain potential unrest among the military’s rank and file and beyond.

Impact on Defence Policy

The upheaval in China’s elite politics, especially within the PLA, will likely persist for several years. Repopulating a hollowed-out Central Military Commission (CMC) with fresh faces untainted by the older generation will take time. Even if the CMC receives a new crop of leaders in the next year’s Party Congress, the vetting will be protracted and rigorous.

However, the PLA’s combat capability, primarily under the domain of the theatre commands and subordinate echelons below the CMC, should remain largely impervious. While scores of senior military officers have fallen in recent years, the PLA still employs thousands of general-rank officers, from major general upward. Therefore, Xi has the latitude to cycle through multiple rounds of promotions and purges until he finds his exact cohort of competent and loyal officers.

Taiwan and India

These developments offer Taiwan some breathing space. Despite Xi’s sense of urgency, he remains a rational actor and appears not fully confident of the PLA’s ability to deliver on the Taiwan front. In addition, obtaining frank assessments of the PLA’s real capabilities to counter US and allied forces in the eastern theatre will become increasingly difficult for him.

Younger officers are likely to avoid delivering bad news, while earning Xi’s trust would be harder, especially after the downfall of a close friend. Xi remains particularly confident in grey-zone operations, as they can be calibrated at will, and this will continue. However, the launch of an outright attack is a gamble, putting all his grey-zone achievements at risk of an uncertain outcome. Xi is likely to reevaluate the costs and benefits of such an adventure carefully.

The same is true on the Indian front. In recent months, India and China have pursued a cautious rapprochement: economic ties have improved, and both states have taken steps to ease interaction between governments, institutions and people. This has, however, not reduced the structural competition and about 50,000 troops remain deployed on the LAC.

China’s close collaboration with Pakistan during Operation Sindoor and its expanding activities in the Indian Ocean don’t inspire much confidence either. The purge is, therefore, more likely to maintain relative calm and a managed status quo on the LAC, even as the PLA continues to enhance its leverage over time.

Time as a Weapon

India consistently misreads three core strategic variables vis-à-vis China: treaties, time, and ambiguity. India considers treaties as binding commitments; China counts them as instruments to shape the adversary’s behaviour while protecting the PLA’s freedom of action. So, New Delhi’s self-restraint enables Beijing’s misadventures. Similarly, while India views time as a stabilising factor in the long run, China uses time to prepare, consolidate, and progressively alter facts on the ground. Moreover, China doesn’t resolve an ambiguity but exploits it as a leverage. India must internalise this logic to make its LAC policy proactive and outcome-shaping, rather than reactive. The turbulence within the PLA offers India an opportunity to augment its relative capabilities and build its internal resilience.