As the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) begins preparations for its 21st National Congress next year, Chinese leader Xi Jinping is intensifying efforts to reshape the Party’s senior ranks, with political loyalty emerging as the dominant criterion for promotion and retention, according to insiders.
Several insiders from within the regime told The Epoch Times that the CCP has recently used the Party’s organizational apparatus, internal disciplinary mechanisms, and military anti-corruption system to screen senior officials across the Party, government, and military. The effort, they said, is aimed not only at removing officials accused of misconduct but also at sidelining those suspected of insufficient loyalty to Xi, even when no clear evidence of wrongdoing exists. They spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal.
The personnel review process could ultimately influence the composition of both the CCP’s next Central Committee and the Central Military Commission (CMC), the Party body that oversees the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), according to the insiders.
Loyalty Screening Across the Party-State
An insider familiar with internal CCP operations told The Epoch Times the current process is more than a routine personnel reshuffle ahead of a Party congress.“[This] is essentially a political review and reorganization,” he said.
According to the insider, some officials are being retired because of age, while others are being removed after being deemed politically unreliable despite the absence of formal disciplinary findings.
“There are people who publicly express loyalty but whose actions are not considered loyal,” he said. “Those individuals are viewed as unreliable and are also being pushed out.”
The insider said preparations for the 21st National Congress have already been underway for more than a year, with personnel changes taking place across key party institutions.
According to the insider, the military remains the least settled area of the leadership structure.
Military Leadership Remains in Flux
The PLA has remained a major focus of Xi’s anti-corruption campaign and political restructuring efforts.A PLA insider told The Epoch Times that evaluating officers’ political loyalty has become one of the biggest challenges facing the leadership.
“The [regime] wants to strengthen the principle that the Party commands the gun,” he said. “But many of the people who commanded the military in previous decades have already been removed. Promoting new people is not simply a matter of looking at their current performance, and examining their past relationships creates another set of problems.”
The PLA insider said much of the previous CMC leadership team has already been removed or sidelined. If officers promoted by former military leaders are also purged, he warned, the military could face operational difficulties.
“The military purge has run into the problem of how to evaluate loyalty,” he said.
Recent developments suggest that political reliability remains central to Beijing’s approach.
Purges Could Shape the Next Military Leadership
The PLA insider said military personnel decisions carry significance beyond internal organizational matters because control of the armed forces remains central to political power in China.“The issue is not simply military personnel management,” the PLA insider said. “It is about who will sit on the next CMC and who will control the gun after the 21st National Congress.”
A China-based scholar told The Epoch Times that the more important question ahead of the congress may not be who rises into the next leadership team, but who disappears from the political system beforehand.
“Xi is rebuilding a personnel system that answers only to him personally,” the scholar said. “He is doing it through three channels—the Party School, the Organization Department, and military anti-corruption campaigns.”
If the military purge continues to expand, he said, the next CMC lineup could undergo major changes.
According to the scholar, preliminary personnel arrangements for the 21st Party Congress could begin taking shape before China’s annual rubber-stamp congressional meetings next March, with the composition of the military leadership expected to be a key issue.
The two insiders and the scholar have all said that the continuing military purge has already affected the stability of the PLA’s command structure, equipment systems, and leadership planning. They said the campaign could also have implications for Beijing’s longer-term military ambitions.