China’s flagship evening news program carried an editorial from the People's Liberation Army Daily on Sunday urging a sustained, intensive and comprehensive campaign to stamp out corruption within the armed forces. The decision to run the piece on Xinwen Lianbo — the Communist Party’s most authoritative television bulletin — elevates the military’s anti-corruption drive from an internal disciplinary matter to an explicit political priority.
The editorial framed the effort as an “attack, protracted and overall” campaign, language that signals a three-pronged approach: a concentrated push against entrenched cases, a long-term institutional effort to prevent recurrence, and a broad, systemic sweep that spans personnel, procurement and organizational culture. That tripartite slogan echoes previous central campaigns that combined immediate purges with structural reforms, and it suggests a blend of punitive action and policy measures to reshape behaviour inside the ranks.
This matters for several reasons. First, a cleaner chain of command, if achieved, would bolster the PLA’s operational effectiveness and the credibility of its modernization drive. Second, by rooting anti-corruption work in both party and military media the leadership is reinforcing political loyalty as a complement to competence: discipline campaigns historically have been used not only to deter graft but also to weaken rival patronage networks and cement control over the officer corps.
For international observers, the move is ambivalent. On one hand, a more disciplined and transparent force could be a more predictable actor in crises; on the other, an anti-corruption campaign that privileges political reliability risks concentrating authority and incentivising loyalty to the central leadership above professional norms. The real-world effects will be visible in personnel rotations, high-profile prosecutions, shifts in defence-industry oversight and the messaging around military readiness over the coming months.