Chinese President Xi Jinping has restructured the country’s Central Military Commission (CMC) in a series of announcements during this week’s Communist Party’s national congress.
The Commission’s leadership, the body that oversees the military, was also unveiled on Wednesday. General Zhang Youxia, a former director of the commission’s equipment development department and a trusted ally of Xi, was named as the new second vice-chairman.
“Xi wants to share the political and administrative powers of the two CMC vice-chairmen because he has realized that the existing structure is incapable of managing the CMC’s day-to-day affairs,” a source told the South China Morning Post. “Too much paperwork has built up awaiting approval since the four former general headquarters were replaced by 15 smaller functional units. But none of the 15 department heads is a real decision maker.”
Under its former structure, the CMC had a chairman, two vice-chairmen, as well as eight individual members including the defense minister, leaders of regional forces, and the generals in charge of the air force, navy, and rocket force.
“The structure of the present CMC leadership is not adequate for the PLA’s modernization and many vested interest groups have spared no effort to promote candidates for the new CMC vice-chairmen, with the front runners all the most trusted men from Xi’s camp,” they continued. “Unlike his predecessors Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, Xi is a strong leader like Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping and will have the final say on the commission’s new line-up.”
The efforts fall under the Chinese leadership plans to do away with the current military structure, with reports in July suggesting that authorities wanted to cut the size of the army down to under one million troops.
In a speech on Monday, Xi outlined his vision to turn the Chinese military into one of the most powerful in the world by 2050 through modernization and embracing technological change.
“A military force is built to fight. Our military must regard combat readiness as the goal for all its work and focus on how to win when it is called upon,” Xi said.
However, the country’s state media service has previously warned that the quality of the military may be in peril, as more and more Chinese recruits are failing the required fitness tests to enter the military because they are “too fat and masturbate too much.”
Other branches of government were also given radical overhauls, including the country’s Supreme Political Body known as the Politburo Standing Committee.
Li Zhanshu will now head up China’s National People’s Congress, Wang Yang will become chairman of the top political advisory body, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference. Wang Huning will direct the party’s ideology and propaganda, Zhao Leji as the party’s new personnel chief and Han Zheng as the latest executive vice-premier.
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