The CMC is China’s highest navy operational and decision-making physique. Distinct from the Ministry of Nationwide Defence of the Folks’s Republic of China – whose major objective is to interface with overseas militaries and publish information in regards to the Chinese language navy – the CMC has operational oversight of the Folks’s Liberation Military (PLA), China’s armed forces, and oversees its technique, doctrine, personnel, tools, and funding and property, amongst different duties.
The physique is led by Xi, its chairman, two vice-chairman and 4 different members who collectively kind the nucleus of China’s navy operations.
In previous celebration congresses, the selection of civilians to function vice-chairman meant that an inheritor obvious for Normal Secretary had been chosen. Xi himself and former Chinese language presidents Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin all served as vice-chairmen earlier than taking up as Normal Secretary of the Communist Celebration and chairman of the CMC. This yr, as anticipated, Xi didn’t select any civilians for the position, suggesting his management and consolidation of energy inside the PLA and CMC is undiminished.
Private ties have proved the figuring out issue for Xi’s new CMC roster. Its highest rating vice-chairman, Normal Zhang Youxia, is one in every of Xi’s most trusted officers within the PLA: his father Zhang Zongxun, a founding member of the PLA, served alongside Xi’s father Xi Zhongxun throughout the founding of the Folks’s Republic.
Zhang, who served because the second vice-chair on the final CMC, was so fascinating a alternative that Xi introduced him on to serve one other time period regardless of Zhang being 72, breaking the traditional protocol for retirement at 68.
Beneath Zhang is Normal He Weidong, a fellow vice-chairman, and new CMC member Admiral Miao Hua, each of whom have been working in Fujian province within the late Nineteen Nineties and early 2000s when Xi was the province’s deputy celebration secretary and governor. Xi and He additionally reportedly overlapped when Xi was celebration secretary of Zhejiang province.
Past these shut connections, the brand new line-up of leaders stands out for a number of causes.
It was not that massive of a shock that Xi selected to retain Zhang Youxia, a detailed and skilled ally. The appointment of the opposite vice-chairman, He Weidong, was.
He lately served as commander of the ETC, with duty over Taiwan and the East China Sea. He additionally served briefly on the CMC’s joint operations command centre – the highest joint command and management centre of the PLA. On this sense, He’s arguably some of the educated navy planners on Taiwan within the PLA.
Nonetheless, He had not beforehand served on the Central Committee of the Communist Celebration nor on the CMC – two preparatory posts for future vice-chairman spots. Xi basically had He leap two grades to land the second CMC vice-chairmanship – a powerful signal of endorsement, and an unmistakable sign that operational expertise close to Taiwan issues for navy management.
When seen within the context of the opposite CMC appointments, He’s rise raises alarm bells in regards to the implications for navy pressure between the Folks’s Republic and Taiwan.
Along with his new roster, Xi has signalled that along with private ties, fight and operational expertise additionally matter. Zhang and new CMC committee member, Liu Zhenli, are two of solely a handful of generals in China who’ve served throughout the Sino-Vietnam warfare of the late Seventies and early Nineteen Eighties.
In the meantime, new appointee Miao Hua has an intensive background in navy districts in Xiamen reverse Taiwan.
Taken collectively, these appointments might provide the clearest indicators but that Xi goals to focus the PLA much more on a doable Taiwan contingency. Whereas not a prediction of confrontation, it does show {that a} background in fight and within the planning of a Taiwan state of affairs could also be variables that matter in Xi’s alternative of navy leaders.
Lyle J. Morris is a senior fellow for overseas coverage and nationwide safety on the Asia Society Coverage Institute’s Heart for China Evaluation