walks
through the rostrum after a meeting during the
12th National
People's Congress at the Great Hall
of the People
in Beijing on March 10, 2014.
Wang Zhao/AFP
via Getty Images
'It's not just the uniformed officers
who don't
cooperate.
Civilian
administrators
are also
staying silent,'
a source
inside China said...
Insiders with knowledge of the Chinese communist regime's internal
discussions say passive noncompliance has begun to spread from the
People's Liberation Army (PLA)
into the civilian administrative system, complicating Beijing's
ability to enforce key directives issued by Chinese leader
Xi Jinping.
Multiple insiders who spoke to The Epoch Times said this
breakdown in command is part of a longstanding pattern of tension
between the senior Party leadership and the military.
They pointed to previous episodes when top
Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
officials encountered resistance from the military while attempting
to manage politically sensitive crises, particularly under former
CCP leader Jiang Zemin.
The latest tensions are occurring after a political purge within the
armed forces, and are accompanied by a renewed push to enforce
personal loyalty to Xi.
Analysts and insiders say the latter has instead
exposed weaknesses in Xi's highly centralized command model, raising
questions about the stability of his control over China's military
apparatus.
The analysts and insiders who spoke to The Epoch Times are
based in China and provided only their surnames out of fear of
reprisal.
Cost of the CCP's
Purges
In China's military hierarchy, the Central Military Commission
(CMC)
sits at the top of the chain of command, with Xi as its chairman.
According to Feng, a source familiar with elite
CCP politics, Xi's recent purge of two powerful military leaders,
Zhang Youxia, vice chairman of the
CMC
Liu Zhenli, chief of the CMC's
Joint Staff Department,
...has
sent shockwaves through the PLA -
and may have broader consequences for the CCP itself.
For decades, the CCP has prioritized political loyalty over
professional competence, often purging experienced officers.
According to Feng, the institutional costs
of that strategy are now converging.
Military delegates arrive at the
opening session
of the National
People's Congress at the
Great Hall of
the People in Beijing on March 5, 2024.
According to
insiders, passive noncompliance has begun
to spread
from the People's Liberation Army (PLA)
into the
civilian administrative system,
complicating
Beijing's ability to enforce
key directives
issued by CCP leader Xi Jinping.
Lintao
Zhang/Getty Images
While the precise status of Zhang Youxia and Liu remains unclear,
China-based insiders told The Epoch Times that both have
refused to cooperate with investigators.
Their noncooperation is likely known to the PLA's
lowest-level officers and soldiers, who now are showing reluctance
to act on orders from the top.
That noncompliance is in turn spilling into the broader bureaucracy,
weakening the regime's administrative machinery, Feng said.
manifested through silence, delay, and
noncooperation,
...is increasingly affecting the regime's
civilian governance.
Under the regime's strategy of "military-civil fusion," many
civilian resources serve the military sector. That civilian
administrative system includes military university administrators
and defense researchers.
After CMC Vice Chairman Zhang Shengmin - who had been
promoted in October 2025 - instructed the PLA's five theater
commands and service branches to publicly pledge,
"resolute support for the unified command of
the CMC",
...the response was muted at best and defiant at
worst.
(Left) Zhang Shengmin, the Chinese
Central Military Commission's
recently
promoted vice chairman, on March 5, 2025.
(Right) Gen.
Zhang Youxia, vice chairman of China's Central Military Commission,
attends the
opening session of the National People's Congress
at the Great
Hall of the People in Beijing on March 5, 2025.
mod.gov.cn/CC-BY-3.0,
Kevin Frayer/Getty Images
"When 'unified command' is mentioned now, the
reaction is intense - but not in a positive way," Feng said,
recounting internal discussions.
"It's not just the uniformed officers who aren't cooperating.
Civilian administrators are also staying silent.
"When neither side signals support, the situation becomes
extremely difficult."
According to Feng, the CMC has dispatched
personnel to major theater commands to press for formal statements
of loyalty to Xi, but lower-level units have largely failed to
respond.
If the military's noncompliance persists, it risks undermining
obedience within the civilian hierarchy, eroding enforcement
channels and posing a direct challenge to the Party's existing power
structure, according to insiders.
Shift in Propaganda Tone
Regardless of Xi's intentions in carrying out the recent purge, the
practical outcome has been a decline in the PLA's effectiveness as a
force capable of responding quickly and effectively to centralized
command, according to the analysts.
Lao, a constitutional scholar based in Beijing, told
The Epoch Times that decades of tightening political control
over the military have produced predictable consequences.
With the continued removal of leaders such as
Zhang Youxia and Liu - officers with battlefield credibility who are
respected within the military - the CCP's long-standing principle
that "the Party commands the gun" is failing.
Instead, the chain of command is increasingly sustained by slogans,
propaganda, and ritualized displays of loyalty rather than by
enforceable command mechanisms, Lao said.
Lao also highlighted the unusual evolution of official rhetoric
surrounding Zhang and Liu.
On Jan. 24, state media
framed the allegations against them
as the most serious category of political offense: undermining Xi in
his role as the CMC chairman, as well as,
"endangering the Party's ruling foundations."
Yet within a week, the official language
shifted sharply, recasting the case
as a corruption investigation - effectively downgrading its
political severity.
Such a rapid retreat from political charges to
financial wrongdoing is rare in CCP elite politics.
Changes in wording in the PLA's official newspaper offered
additional insight.
A PLA Daily editorial on Jan. 31 calls on
officers and soldiers to,
"resolutely support" the Party leadership and
"maintain a high degree of consistency" with Xi.
That shift in propaganda tone, Lao said, was
itself a signal of resistance.
In CCP political discourse, loyalty
is typically declared as a fact, not as something that must be
repeatedly demanded.
Delegates read newspapers at the
closing session
of the National
People's Congress in Beijing on March 11, 2025.
Within days,
official rhetoric on Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli
shifted from
framing their alleged offenses as grave political crimes
to recasting
the case as corruption,
effectively
downgrading its political severity.
Kevin Frayer/Getty
Images
Some insiders interpreted the PLA's continued silence
as evidence that CMC authority is being deliberately sidestepped.
A propaganda officer from a PLA theater command
told The Epoch Times that the wording change indicates that
the Party's military leadership is effectively paralyzed.
"When 'obedience' and 'support' have to be
written into authoritative texts again and again, it usually
means genuine consensus doesn't exist," the officer said.
Noncompliance in Chain of Command
Some analysts pointed to parallels between Xi's move against
Zhang Youxia and past clashes between leaders of the CCP and
the CMC.
The last time such a clash occurred was during Jiang's era.
A former aide who was close to the now-deceased
paramount leader told The Epoch Times about a closely guarded
episode from April 1999, following a peaceful sit-in protest by
adherents of the
Falun Gong spiritual practice
near Zhongnanhai in Beijing.
The former aide said that Jiang, then both Party leader and CMC
chairman, admitted during an internal meeting that he had made a
failed attempt to deploy troops to Beijing to suppress the sit-in.
Jiang criticized then-CMC Vice Chairman Zhang
Wannian for failing to carry out the order.
Although that fact has never been made public,
the former aide said it has long been known among the CCP's senior
military figures.
Falun Gong practitioners gathered
near Zhongnanhai
to
peacefully appeal for their freedom of belief
in Beijing on
April 25, 1999.
Courtesy of
Minghui.org
However, less than three months later, on July 20, 1999, the CCP
launched its brutal persecution of Falun Gong across China.
Since then, millions of practitioners have
been unlawfully detained and tortured, with many even
killed for their organs.
A Beijing-based analyst told The Epoch Times
that the CMC has not yet lost control of the PLA.
Orders are still formally obeyed, but the
Party's control is rapidly hollowing out...
