Editor's Note

Editor's Note CLM Issue 87 March 2026.pdf

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The decimation of the top ranks of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) during the last two years has fueled an intense debate about the reasons behind the largest purge in the Chinese military in the post-Mao era. Despite the absence of credible evidence, many observers and journalists attribute the purge to factional strife and Xi Jinping’s insecurity. However, Joel Wuthnow’s close examination of the available evidence, primarily biographical records of the fallen PLA commanders, reveals a different picture: most purges seem to have been intended to clean up the corruption-prone branches of the PLA to support Xi’s broad agenda of readying the military for combat by its 2027 centennial date, even though, the unprecedented scale of the purges has likely set that agenda back. A mixed picture emerges from an examination of these purges. While they demonstrate Xi’s ability to remove powerful subordinates, in spite of his ceaseless exhortations they reveal his failure to turn the party’s armed wing into a truly professional and potent military force.

In recent years, the Chinese leadership, state media, and foreign policy analysts have consistently perceived the U.S. as a declining but dangerous power. As Jonathan Czin and Allie Matthias note, three factors account for the remarkable durability and appeal of this perspective in the Chinese press: genuine assessments of U.S. internal contradictions, the Chinese Communist Party’s ideological predisposition to see the capitalist powers as declining, and a desire to bolster party propaganda. However, contrary to previous expectations, perceptions of U.S. decline have not prompted a shift toward a more aggressive policy. Instead, until recently, this assessment seems to have led Chinese officials to judge that time is on China’s side, and that the PRC should avoid provoking the U.S., which has the capacity to lash out at China even as its power declines. PRC strategy in response to a declining but dangerous hegemon focuses on insulating itself against the U.S. and gaining international prestige from its various Global Initiatives.

In her in-depth analysis of the Chinese political economy causes of economic “involution,” Ling Chen shows that this type of cutthroat, race-to-the-bottom competition is a symptom of the fiscal structure and flawed political institutions. In response to post-Covid economic doldrums, the central government, local governments, and businesses adopted policies and strategies that have created a vicious cycle. The strict growth targets and debt-reduction targets set by Beijing force local governments to expand investment in state-favored industries, creating low-profit competition, oversupply, declining revenue, and falling overall demand. Yet the survival imperative of businesses dictates an expansion of production. A deep dive into the real estate and electric vehicle sectors reveals that these sectors share similar dynamics. Although they differ in terms of dominant players, market expansion success, and the role of local governments, they both are struggling with excessive capacity, slow turnover, declining prices, and high financial leverage. The difficulties Beijing has encountered in fighting “involution” are thus self-inflicted. A more effective effort would require the central government to realign its policy goals with those of local stakeholders.

Although Taiwan is the most likely flashpoint of a direct military conflict between the U.S. and China, Beijing’s intentions remain as difficult to decipher as ever. In this context, any change in the official framing of the Taiwan issue warrants scrutiny. This is the case with “the party’s overall strategy for solving the Taiwan issue in the new era,” a new, albeit unwieldy, phrase the Chinese government began to adopt at the end of 2021 to summarize Xi Jinping’s policy toward Taiwan since 2013. Minxin Pei traces the origin, appearances, and interpretation of the phrase in statements by top Chinese leaders and senior officials responsible for the Taiwan portfolio to determine what exactly the “overall strategy” is. He finds that, for the most part, this “overall strategy” does not deviate much from the policy of Xi’s predecessors. However, the elevation of “resolute opposition to interference by external forces” to the same level as “opposition to Taiwan independence” indicates a fundamental shift in Beijing’s thinking about Washington’s role in cross-Strait relations. Apparently convinced that the U.S. now has effectively gutted its one-China policy, Chinese leaders have correspondingly raised their risk tolerance in reacting to perceived U.S. actions in support of Taiwan. Even though the “overall strategy” continues to emphasize the priority of domestic development over reunification, a future crisis resulting from gray-zone coercion in response to perceived provocations by Taipei or Washington is nevertheless more likely than a pre-meditated naval blockade or a full-scale invasion in the foreseeable future. 

China’s widely condemned crackdown on the Uyghur minority in Xinjiang may have disappeared from news headlines. But the closing of the so-called re-education camps may have led to a troubling misconception that state violence targeting Uyghurs is over. In reality, as Tim Grose shows, China’s infrastructure of repression has become more deeply entrenched in the region, as evidenced by open-source materials, especially government reports, official county-level blogs, and cadre diaries. Notably, long prison sentences have replaced short-term internment, boarding schools increasingly separate Uyghur children from their families, and labor programs continue to relocate hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs from their hometowns. Designed to weaken Uyghur attachments to their homeland and to dismantle their social institutions, on-going Chinese policies are reshaping Uyghur identity and creating a new reality on the ground.