China’s powerful Central Military Commission has shrunk to its smallest size in decades under the leadership of Xi Jinping, a Newsweek analysis shows, with analysts saying it highlights the personalisation of his control – and efforts to make the military combat-ready.

The changes come at a critical time for China as it rivals the United States in military and economic terms amid the ever-present question as to whether it will seek to take over democratic Taiwan, which Communist Party leader Xi has repeatedly said he wants to incorporate as what he sees as an integral part of China.

Yet scores of changes in security and other political positions, including in China’s top military leadership, have also brought the dismissal of persons seen as Xi loyalists, raising speculation among some China-watchers of a challenge to the most powerful grip that any leader has held since the era of party strongmen Deng Xiaoping and Mao Zedong.

“I think it’s a definite sign of Xi Jinping’s attempts to personalize the control over the military,” said Jaehwan Lim, a professor of international politics at Japan’s Aoyama Gakuin University. “I think that it’s kind of becoming pathological, an extension of his personalization of the control of the military… His agenda is the strengthening of the PLA, is combat readiness. That’s his pretty clear agenda,” Lim said.

Beijing’s embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment. An email to the address of the spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Defense on the ministry website was rejected by the ministry server.

Newsweek‘s analysis showed that the Central Military Commission had now been reduced to five members after last week’s dismissal of Admiral Miao Hua which was reported by state media – the lowest number since Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 70s when it had five members.

But the status of commission vice-chairman General He Weidong is unclear as he has not been mentioned in state and party media reports since March, though his name is still on the website. Without He, it would have only four members.

The status of He has added to growing speculation over political maneuvring and a possible internal challenge to Xi that strengthened this week with the announcement from China’s Politburo of a new “Central Committee decision-making and coordination body” to “enhance the centralized and unified leadership of the CPC Central Committee over major initiatives.”

The Politburo announcement warned the members of the 205-person Central Committee – Xi is a member – against “taking over others’ functions or overstepping boundaries.”

Xi presided over the meeting but, tellingly, was not given the by-now customary designation as the “core”, and China-watchers are divided on whether the body would weaken or strengthen Xi’s grip.

“We do not have any clear, unequivocal signs of a political crisis. We have the echoes of something happening in the depths of CCP politics,” said Peter Mattis, President of the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based political research and analysis organization.

“I think the key issue is that people conflate power-struggle with Xi losing power. Xi could struggle and win,” Mattis said.

Fate of Xi Loyalists

While on the surface the military reshuffles point to even more centralized control, some analysts have noted that Xi loyalists are among those who have been removed.

Admiral Miao Hua had been consistently promoted by Xi and had served alongside him in Fujian province for years.

Miao had been placed under investigation on suspicion of “serious disciplinary violations” last November, according to China’s Ministry of Defense spokesperson Wu Qian. Two more admirals close to Miao who had also been promoted by Xi – Li Hanjun and Li Pengcheng – were also purged, Andrew S. Erickson and Christopher H. Sharman of the China Maritime Studies Institute of the U.S. Naval War College wrote on July 1.

Lim believed that the changes could be about giving greater autonomy to the military, known as the People’s Liberation Army, to make it more effective.

“The PLA welcomes his moves, his military reforms, because they just want to focus on seeing their combat readiness rather than being mobilized to do something else. One sort of message he wants to send to the military is like, extreme autonomy to the military. So autonomy is the key word here,” Lim said.

Others, however, question whether Xi could be facing disaffection from other elite members of the Party and some members of the military, Chinese and foreign observers say. Xi is general secretary of the CCP, chairman of its Central Military Commission that controls the military, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), and state president.

Xi’s consolidation of power became evident with his appointment to a third term as CCP leader in 2022 – breaking a custom of serving only two terms. The term is scheduled to end in 2027 but no successor has been identified.

Reliable signs of any shift in power would only emerge from a regular meeting of the CCP Central Committee known as the Fourth Plenum that is expected in August, said an analyst in China who requested anonymity for fear of retribution. No date has been set for the meeting.

Ideas that a serious pushback is underway – a kind of “slow-motion coup” set in motion by party elites including former CCP leaders – are being circulated by Chinese political exiles, including one with the moniker “Lao Deng”, who has posted dozens of videos that receive hundreds of thousands of views on his channel, “Lao Deng Starts Talking”.

In the videos, the Canada-based farmer and dissident discusses information about meetings that he says insiders in China are sending him – party and security service members, including high-ranking political secretaries. But in a telephone interview, he declined to provide Newsweek with evidence to support his assertions.

In the complex world of CCP politics, clues to power can lie in carefully chosen words. The analyst in China said that the use of the word “coordination” to describe the work of the new organization “can only mean that things can no longer be decided just by one person,” and thus was a crimp on Xi.

“If there are different opinions among the policymakers, this agency will come forward to coordinate and listen to collective opinions. This will be the new decision-making principle,” the analyst said.

Different Opinions

Not so, said exiled journalist Zhao Lanjian who lives near Washington, D.C. and who publishes on the X social media platform.

Zhao told Newsweek the June 30th Politburo announcement should be read as an increase in Xi’s power. Not only had Xi not lost power, but he was using the changes announced by the politburo to ensure he has people in the places he wants, said Zhao.

“So-called sideline theory” or “coup theory” were based on speculation and a lack of understanding of CCP politics, Zhao said.

Henry Gao, a law professor at the Singapore Management University, said that the situation was unclear.

But he said that the new decision-making organization announced by the Politburo raised questions about Xi’s dominance.

“I read this more as a sign of Xi being forced to share more power, as the new institution is unnecessary otherwise, especially if you put this together with the purge of his allies in the army,” Gao said via email.

“I believe we will require more time to observe and understand how this new body will operate in practice, as well as its relationship to existing structures like the Politburo and its Standing Committee,” Gao said.

Internal political turmoil is normal for the CCP, said Mattis, who has tracked apparent challenges to Xi since the leader launched an ongoing anti-corruption campaign near the beginning of his rule.

“These have arisen periodically, including 2014-2015, 2017, 2022. This latest round feels like it has been building since last summer,” Mattis said.

“The seeds of an existential political crisis are embedded deeply within the CCP, and we have had one such crisis at least every political generation. And Xi is effectively into his second political generation,” he said.

“The CCP’s elites compete for power, not so much policy. They all agree on restoring their version of China to a forgotten glory, and they largely agree how that should be done. The Party’s elite, however, do not agree on whose hand should guide the party-state,” Mattis said.