Chinese President Xi Jinping has again sought to shore up the military’s ideological defences, demanding absolute loyalty to the Communist Party from all ranks, just weeks after the country’s top general came under investigation for corruption.
“There must be no room within the military for those harbouring disloyalty towards the party, nor any shelter for corrupt individuals,” Xi told a meeting of military and armed police lawmakers on the sidelines of the National People’s Congress (NPC) on Saturday.
“The fight against corruption must be resolutely advanced” and the party’s leadership over the military must be “comprehensively strengthened”, Xi told the NPC deputies, according to state news agency Xinhua.
Xi, who heads the Central Military Commission (CMC), the military’s top decision-making body, told the delegates that since 2012 the party had deepened “political rectification” within the armed forces with “unprecedented resolve and intensity” and had achieved “significant results”.
Political rectification largely refers to anti-corruption efforts, which have swept across the country in the past decade, claiming a slew of top generals and defence industry bosses in the past few years alone.
Those downfalls were reflected in the lower number of NPC deputies from the armed forces, a delegation that has shrunk from 281 members in 2023 to 243 this year.
