By Joyce Huang | 2026-07-14

Chinese President Xi Jinping, who is also head of the military, promoted two senior officers to the rank of general -- the highest rank for Chinese military personnel in active service, on July 3.

The military shakeup came after Xi has purged nearly the entirety of his top military command, or the seven-member Central Military Commission (CMC), in a long-running anticorruption drive.

Xi conducted one military purge soon after taking power in 2012 and a second, more aggressive one that began "around 2023," according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. That purge is still raging through the military's ranks.

Xi presented orders of promotion to Zhang Shuguang, secretary of the CMC's discipline inspection commission and director of the CMC's oversight commission, and Wang Gang, the commander of the People's Liberation Army (PLA) Air Force, during a ceremony at CMC headquarters in Beijing.

Prior to the promotion, both Zhang and Wang were lieutenant generals, state-owned China Daily reported on July 3.

Purge continues

The latest shakeup, however, will not end Xi's purge as he shows no great confidence in the top military leadership's incumbent lineup, analysts say.

Observers still do not know if the two newly promoted generals will fill vacancies on the generally seven-member CMC, which is down to two members: Xi himself and Vice Chairman Zhang Shengmin, they add.

"As someone who has been serving as the Chinese Communist Party's and the country's top leader for almost 14 years, Xi still seems to find it difficult to promote his own people. I think that shows his power is being greatly challenged," Ming-Shih Shen, a research fellow at the Institute for National Defense and Security Research in Taipei, told Focus.

The purge purportedly helps Xi consolidate his power, but it may have backfired by alienating him from other military elites, said Shen.

Xi's picks?

The two newly promoted generals were unlikely to be Xi's choices as they have no apparent ties to him, Shen added.

Instead, Zhang Shuguang, 62, is closer to Zhang Shengmin, 67. Probably the Xi regime tapped him to take over the senior Zhang's secretary position in the CMC's discipline inspection commission because both had experience with the military's antigraft unit, he added.

The elder Zhang may be Xi's deputy and right-hand man in the military, but Xi has not shown full support for him as he is still not a Politburo member, according to Shen.

Leadership reshuffle

Still, the junior Zhang's political lineage makes him a promising candidate to fill a CMC vacancy while the case for Wang is unclear, according to analysts.

"Wang Gang is part of a new generation of PLA Air Force elites with hard operational experience who have been delegated important roles in the Chinese military since the latest round of purges," James Char, an assistant professor at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies in Singapore, told the Associated Press (AP) in a July 5 report.

But Shen noted that Wang probably had closer ties to Xu Qiliang, an Air Force general and ex-CMC vice chairman, who retired in 2023 and died in 2025.

The death of Xu might have eased Xi's mind as Wang shows little association with former Xi rivals Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli.

Chinese authorities, in January, placed Zhang Youxia, ex-CMC vice-chairman, and Liu, former chief of staff of the CMC's joint staff department -- both generals of the PLA Army -- under investigation for "suspected serious violations of discipline and law."

Prior to that, the military expelled nine top generals including He Weidong, ex-CMC vice chairman and Miao Hua, former director of the CMC's political work department, for alleged financial crimes last October -- one of its largest public crackdowns in decades.

While some say that the purge helps clear the way for Xi to choose future leaders, K. Tristan Tang, a nonresident fellow at the U.S.-based National Bureau of Asian Research, said that Xi has promoted only four lieutenant generals to general.

Xi last promoted Yang Zhibin and Han Shengyan, respectively commanders of the PLA Eastern and Central Theater Command, to general last December.

"He is still watching, testing and vetting senior PLA lieutenant generals," Tang told AP.

Ideological loyalty

Furthermore, Xi sent hundreds of top PLA officials to an unprecedented10-week ideology training camp, studying Xi's speeches and corrupt cadres' confessions while marching in formation, the South China Morning Post reported June 25.

It added that Xi personally ordered holding the camp, which ran from April 8 to June 12, and the goal was to convey "which red lines must never be crossed," citing the military newspaper PLA Daily.

The camp indicates "that Xi may believe further ideological work must be completed within the PLA," the Institute for the Study of War concluded in an update on July 2.