Empty chairs and a shock promotion as Xi warns purges will continue

October 30, 2026 — 5:54am

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Beijing: In about a year from now, if the weight of expectations holds, Xi Jinping will secure an unprecedented fourth term as China’s paramount leader.

Having already abolished term limits in 2018, and purged factional friends and foes alike, Xi is preparing the ground for the loyalists he wants by his side when he extends his reign for another five years at the 21st Party Congress, due in the second half of next year.

One of those loyalists appears to be Zhang Shengmin. The top general, and Xi’s anti-corruption enforcer inside the military, was promoted to the powerful Politburo during a meeting of hundreds of party officials on Thursday.

Zhang is just one of two remaining members on the party’s Central Military Commission, China’s supreme military decision-making body. The other is Xi.

Over the past two years, Xi has purged the five other generals he hand-picked to serve on the commission, in a near-total decapitation of the leadership of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). Since 2012, hundreds of other senior and lower-ranked officials throughout the party have been removed or placed under........

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