China's Fifth Plenum (五中全會) convenes in Beijing in October, and Taiwanese national security officials say it will bring sweeping personnel changes across the Communist Party, the government and the military. The groundwork has already been laid: on August 28, the 24th session of China's 14th National People's Congress Standing Committee passed a resolution removing Zhang Youxia (張又俠) from his post as vice chairman of the Central Military Commission and Liu Zhenli (劉振立) from his seat on the commission. The same session also stripped Zhang, Liu, former Strategic Support Force commander Ju Qiansheng (巨乾生), and Zhong Shaojun (鍾紹軍) of their National People's Congress positions. Zhong, a Xi Jinping loyalist from the so-called Zhijiang New Army faction, had run the Central Military Commission's General Office for 11 years despite having no military background.
Taiwan's national security establishment expects all of these figures to be formally expelled from the party at the Fifth Plenum, and officials say the plenum's personnel agenda extends well beyond this group.
Fifth Plenum Set To Expel Forty More Central Committee Members
Taiwanese officials describe the removals as part of a broader campaign to "strictly govern the party." Even before Zhang and the others lost their posts, China's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and National Supervisory Commission announced on August 27 that Jiangxi party deputy secretary and governor Ye Jianchun (葉建春) was under investigation for "serious violations of discipline and law," making him the 11th vice-ministerial-level or higher official removed for investigation in 2026, a record for a single year. Separately, the National People's Congress Standing Committee is reviewing a new cross-border anti-corruption law, and the Central Military Commission's procurement platform has published a call for tips on irregularities in Rocket Force purchasing.
According to a count by Hong Kong's Ming Pao newspaper cited by Taiwanese officials, the October plenum is expected to expel 40 sitting Central Committee members. Combined with expulsions already carried out at the third and fourth plenums since the 20th Party Congress, that would mean more than a quarter of the 205 Central Committee members produced by that congress will ultimately have been purged.
Two Vacant Theater Commands Set To Be Filled
Taiwan's national security apparatus says personnel questions were also a major topic at the Chinese leadership's Beidaihe (北戴河) summer retreat, including whether to fill systemic gaps at the general officer level and whether to fill vacant theater command posts. Officials say the direction set at Beidaihe calls for the Fifth Plenum to first fill two long-vacant commands: the Eastern Theater Command, which oversees operations aimed at Taiwan, Japan and other targets along the first island chain, and the Central Theater Command, which is responsible for defending the capital.
A Yearlong Purge Targets Loyalty To Xi Jinping
On the party's internal personnel front, Taiwanese officials say Beijing is preparing to launch a yearlong campaign framed as "advancing several major issues in comprehensively and strictly governing the party." Its stated targets are what officials describe as "three impurities" and "three types of people," shorthand for rooting out anything seen as eroding the so-called Two Upholds, the principle of unconditionally backing Xi Jinping's status as the party's core leader and the authority of the party's central leadership.
Under that framework, the "three impurities" are defined as impure thinking, meaning insufficient loyalty to Xi; impure organization, meaning the formation of cliques or factions; and impure behavior, covering pro-American sympathies, illusions about peaceful political change, or arrangements in which an official works in Beijing while his family lives in the western United States.
New Loyalty Tests For China's Military Officers
Taiwanese officials say a full rectification campaign targeting these "impurities" will follow the Fifth Plenum and is meant to be substantially complete before the 21st Party Congress, clearing the way for the personnel changes that follow. Looking ahead to that reshuffle, officials say Beijing intends to require absolute, singular loyalty to Xi in thought, action and politics, along with unwavering confidence in the drive to outmaneuver the United States and in the narrative that the East is rising while the West declines. Officials whose families maintain any ties to the United States or its allies are to be weeded out entirely. For military appointments specifically, in addition to mastery of Xi's doctrine on building a strong military, the plan calls for periodic and randomized written and oral tests designed to gauge, at a psychological level, whether officers are genuinely and sincerely obedient.
