Xi Calls for Intensified Anti-Corruption Drive and High-Tech Modernisation of China’s Military

On July 31, President Xi Jinping addressed senior Communist Party leaders, urging a stronger fight against corruption within the People’s Liberation Army (People's Liberation Army (PLA)) and the acceleration of a “high-quality” modernisation of national defence. The remarks were made at a Politburo group session, the party’s top decision-making body, and were reported by the state news agency Xinhua.

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The Politburo meeting precedes the PLA’s 99th anniversary, a milestone that analysts expect to be low-key but symbolic of the centenary drive for combat readiness. Ongoing anti-corruption purges have, according to a February report by the London-based Independent Institute of Strategic Studies, weakened fighting readiness and exposed command-structure deficiencies. The United States Pentagon previously said the U.S. military believed Chinese leaders aim to have forces capable of winning a conflict over Taiwan by 2027, while more recent U.S. intelligence assessments state Beijing does not currently plan an invasion in that year, preferring non-kinetic means of control.

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He called for the creation of an “intelligent military system,” highlighting greater use of unmanned technologies and deeper integration of cyber-information capabilities. Xi also stressed that combat effectiveness remains the fundamental standard for evaluating the modernisation of the armed forces.

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• “More than anything else, the foremost priority for the Communist Party leader and China's politico-military leadership (is) who ought to ?be appointed into the Central Military Commission to lead the party-army into its next century,” — James Char, a China security scholar at Singapore's S

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