Latest PLA Anti-Corruption Campaign Enhances Xi Jinping’s Control Over the Military

Executive Summary:

• The PLA followed the overall disciplinary work of the Chinese Communist Party to promote the “all-around battle” against corruption.
• The “all-around battle” against corruption includes strengthening vertical control and enhancing horizontal coordination. The former focuses on centralizing power while delegating responsibility, and the latter aims to expand the reach and power of disciplinary work.
• By expanding the reach of disciplinary work in the military and further tightening control over the disciplinary system, Xi Jinping is taking another step to strengthen his control over all aspects of the PLA’s operations.

In late April, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) held its annual training session for newly appointed discipline inspection committee secretaries and supervisory committee directors at the military corps level and above (全军军级以上单位新任纪委书记监委主任培训班). This session aimed to help senior military officers responsible for maintaining discipline better understand their responsibilities and the expectations of their superiors regarding disciplinary work. Given that this training event took place after Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission He Weidong (何卫东) was reportedly put under investigation and Deputy Secretary of the Military Discipline Commission Tang Yong (唐勇) was dismissed, it may reveal recent shortcomings in the PLA’s disciplinary system and the Party’s efforts to address these issues (China Brief, February 14; April 11).

A new emphasis in this year’s disciplinary work is the “all-around battle” (总体战) against corruption (Xinhua, January 6; Xinhua English, January 6). The phrase was mentioned during the plenary meeting of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI), the expanded meeting of the Central Military Commission Discipline Inspection Commission, and the training session for key PLA disciplinary officials in 2025. It signals a new phase in Xi’s efforts to exercise oversight of the military as he attempts to construct a loyal and operationally ready force.

‘All-Around Battle’ Focuses on Unified Leadership and Integrated Management

The “all-around battle” against corruption has now become a key focus of disciplinary work. In recent years, the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) main disciplinary meetings have opted for alternative terms like “tough battle” (攻坚战) and “protracted battle” (持久战) to describe the anti-corruption campaign. CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping used these terms in CCDI plenary meetings in 2015, 2017, and 2022, and they were also included in the 20th Party Congress report in 2022. None of these mentioned the “all-around battle” (Party Members Net, January 13, 2015; January 6, 2017; January 18, 2022; Xinhua, October 25, 2022).

The term “all-around battle” began to be used and discussed in important meetings and articles starting in 2022. In the 40th Collective Study Session of the Politburo of the Central Committee (中央政治局学习会议) in June 2022, Xi Jinping mentioned the need to fight the “all-around battle,” though the phrase appeared only in part of Xi’s remarks at the session (Xinhua, June 18, 2022). Although the 20th Party Congress report did not include the term, in his analysis of the report the head of the CCDI’s publicity department referred to the need to “fight the all-around battle” (打好总体战) and repeated some of the key points made by Xi at the earlier study session (Party Members Net, October 28, 2022). The term was not mentioned in Xi’s speeches at the CCDI meetings in 2023 and 2024, but finally achieved parity with “tough battle” and “protracted battle” in 2025, when it appeared alongside them in the headline of the session’s readout (Xinhua, January 9, 2023; January 8, 2024; January 6). The annual meeting of the Military Discipline Inspection Commission also mentioned the “all-around battle” for the first time in 2025 (PLA Daily, January 10).

According to an explanation of the “all-around battle” in the CCDI’s official publication, China Discipline Inspection and Supervision Magazine (中国纪检监察杂志), corruption is a complex problem that results from the long-term accumulation and continuous festering of various negative factors within the Party. An “all-around battle” is required to combat it. This involves a full deployment of anti-corruption forces, a comprehensive coordination of anti-corruption resources, and full-process prevention and treatment of corruption issues, to eliminate the root causes of the problem (China Discipline Inspection and Supervision Magazine, August 1, 2022).

Two themes emerge in Xi Jinping’s articulation of the “all-around battle”: unity and integration. The emphasis on unity refers to the concentration of power and responsibility, especially the centralized and unified leadership of the Party Central Committee over anti-corruption work and the responsibility of Party committees at all levels to govern the Party strictly. It is primarily the top leader’s responsibility to ensure the implementation of relevant supervisory duties by the functional departments and establish a system in which all parties are responsible and coordinated for managing the Party. The second aspect of the “all-around battle,” integration, highlights the need to merge disciplinary work with other elements of political work. Xi said that the anti-corruption struggle must be coordinated with the Party’s political, ideological, organizational, work style, disciplinary, and institutional construction. He also called for political supervision, ideological education, organizational management, work style reform, discipline enforcement, and institutional improvement to play an important role in dealing with corruption (Xinhua, June 18, 2022).

The China Discipline Inspection and Supervision Magazine article expands on the integration aspect of the “all-around battle.” Focusing on “full-cycle management” (全周期管理), it details addressing the sources of corruption, improving the system and mechanism for managing power and officials, and building an ideological defense against corruption and moral degeneration. It also calls for cadres to actively assist Party committees at their level to manage anti-corruption work, including through promoting the coordination of various measures in terms of policy orientation, helping with implementation, and ensuring measures are aligned and achieve effective results.

The PLA has also discussed the “all-around battle” against corruption. Li Xin’an (李新安), a researcher at the Academy of Military Science’s Institute of Military Political Work, defines the anti-corruption “all-around battle” as emphasizing a “systemic” (系统性) approach, while the “tough battle” aims to aggressively and thoroughly address every corruption issue, and the “protracted battle” focuses on maintaining long-term efforts against corruption. Li emphasizes the unity aspect of the all-around battle and calls for strengthening responsibility for strict Party governance. In this view, Party committees are expected to take the initiative to lead and manage, the CCDI to perform its supervisory duties, and all responsible parties to be aware of, to be accountable for, and to fulfil their responsibilities. Each entity must take responsibility, coordinate, and form synergies (China National Defense Daily, April 25).

PLA Follows CCDI into ‘All-Around Battle’ Against Corruption

Each year, coverage of the PLA’s anti-corruption work meetings or related documents generally appears after that of the CCDI’s plenary meetings. The content of these meetings is based on the Party’s overall disciplinary priorities and is then adjusted for the specific context of the PLA. In a departure from the last two years, the PLA’s anti-corruption efforts in 2025 follow the rest of the Party in emphasizing the deployment of the “all-around battle.”

The 2025 expanded meeting of the Military Discipline Inspection Commission included work items that are not purely disciplinary but focus on the integration aspect of the “all-around battle” approach. Introducing the term “all-around battle” for the first time, the meeting called for correcting the selection and use of personnel and rectifying ideology, personnel management, organization, work style, and discipline. It also called for continuously purifying the political ecosystem and facilitating inter-departmental, cross-sector, and military-civilian coordination and joint governance. This was a departure from the previous two years, which primarily focused on disciplinary work itself, and made no mention of any of the “battles” (Xinhua, January 13, 2023; January 12, 2024; January 10).

On January 21, 2025, the PLA Daily published an “interpretation of the PLA’s discipline inspection and supervision tasks” (军队纪检监察工作任务解读) for the year. These included several important points related to the “all-around battle,” all of which were new additions from previous years. The work requirements included items that focused on fostering unity through the “all-around battle,” such as ensuring ideological, political, and operational alignment with the Party with Xi Jinping at its core” (确保思想上政治上行动上同以习近平同志为核心的党中央保持高度一致) and “improving the institutional regulations and supporting measures for managing power, while minimizing discretionary authority” (完善管权治权的制度规定和配套措施，最大限度压缩权力自由裁量空间). Other work items focused on integration, such as calls to “cultivate ideals, Party spirit, and moral character that align with the new era and new mission” (培养同新时代新使命相适应的理想信念、党性修养、官德人品) and to strengthen coordination and communication between military and civilian departments. The document also outlined concrete tasks for the year, including establishing an evaluation and supervision mechanism for Party committees to “oversee inspection rectification” (抓巡视整改) (PLA Daily, January 30, 2023; January 29, 2024; January 21).

Table 1: New Discipline Work Focuses of the PLA’s All-Around Battle Against Corruption in 2025

(Source: Compiled by the author)

The 2025 training session for newly appointed discipline inspection committee secretaries and supervisory committee directors at the military corps level and above also followed this trend. As with other relevant documents released this year, coverage of the session indicates that it placed greater emphasis on disciplinary personnel engaging in the “all-around battle” than in previous years (PLA Daily, May 7). Again, the insertion of the phrase was a new addition, while “tough battle” and “protracted battle” were mentioned in both 2023 and 2024, the all-around battle was not introduced until 2025. According to the report, a key task of the training was learning and understanding Xi’s strategic deployments on deepening political training, improving conduct, and fighting corruption—part of the emphasis in the “all-around battle” approach on instilling unity. Integrative work was a key focus of the session, too. Discipline inspection personnel engaged in cross-unit and cross-functional work integration must understand the regulatory basis and operational scope of coordination, as failing to do so could lead to violations of discipline or law, making them subjects of disciplinary investigations. As such, the session aimed to strengthen the understanding and application of laws such as the “Supervision Law” (监察法) (Xinhua, March 26, 2018). This placed greater emphasis on mastering and applying regulations rather than simply explaining them, as was the case in 2024. [1] The training’s expected outcomes include continuously improving the ability to perform duties in accordance with regulations, discipline, and law. This indicates a shift in focus from 2024. Now, instead of merely seeking to promote standardization, legalization, and formalization of discipline inspection and supervision work, the Party will seek to ensure that individual disciplinary personnel have the ability to carry out their tasks (PLA Daily, June 12, 2023; June 30, 2024; May 7).

Xi’s Distrust of the Disciplinary System

Comparison of the three important meetings and reports above—the expanded meeting of the Central Military Commission Discipline Inspection Commission, the “interpretation” published in the PLA Daily, and the training session for officials—makes clear that the PLA’s discipline work in 2025 will coalesce around the “all-around battle” against corruption. This will take place on the one hand by strengthening vertical control (unity) through centralizing power while delegating responsibility to lower levels and ensuring that even lower tiers are held accountable. On the other hand, it will occur via improved horizontal coordination, through broadening the reach of disciplinary work and expanding its power (integration). A summary of this analysis is laid out in Table 1 above.

Calls to strengthen central oversight and expand disciplinary powers indicate that Xi does not trust the current state of disciplinary work within the PLA or the military discipline system more broadly. Corruption has persisted in recent years, and it is unclear why Xi only now is choosing to ratchet up disciplinary work. One clue lies in the 2025 “interpretation,” which warns of “severe punishment for those who remain stubborn and continue to resist after the 20th Party Congress, especially after the [2024] Central Military Commission’s Political Work Meeting” (对顶风违纪违法问题快查快办，对党的二十大后特别是中央军委政治工作会议后执迷不悟、仍不收手的严惩不贷) (PLA Daily, January 21). This likely indicates that Xi was hoping for more progress to be made in implementing discipline-focused measures from the June 2024 Military Commission Political Work Meeting. These stipulated that the PLA’s Political Work Department and Discipline Inspection Commission must strengthen coordination and cooperation in ways that closely align with the framing of the “all-around battle” against corruption (Xinhua, June 19, 2024).

Xi’s dissatisfaction with military disciplinary work to date could have triggered the new push for the “all-around battle.” It might even explain in part why He Weidong is suspected to have been put under investigation or removed in early 2025. Personnel mismanagement, which is precisely the focus of the integration aspect of this year’s PLA anti-corruption campaign, may have led Xi to lose trust in He (China Brief, April 11).

Conclusion

The essence of the “all-around battle” is to expand the reach of disciplinary work while tightening Xi’s control over discipline management. If the Party achieves a degree of victory in this battle, Xi will have taken another step toward strengthening his control over all aspects of PLA operations. Such an approach may have a dual impact on PLA readiness. On the one hand, operations and processes within the PLA may become more complex and cumbersome due to a strengthened disciplinary system. On the other, supervising combat readiness and training—a current focus of military discipline work—suggests that Xi’s emphasis on enhancing readiness capabilities may be further reinforced through the disciplinary system.

Notes

[1] The 2024 training session which focused on “a detailed explanation” (重点讲解) of the recently revised “Regulations on Disciplinary Sanctions of the Party” (中国共产党纪律处分条例) (Xinhua, December 27, 2023; PLA Daily, June 30, 2024).