Chinese President Xi Jinping, on Wednesday (April 8, 2026), urged the graft-hit top Generals of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) to uphold the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) ideological purity to achieve the objectives of the force’s centenary next year.
In a message at the opening ceremony of a training course for senior military officers, Xi asked them to maintain absolute political loyalty to the CCP and noted that any thought or action influenced by self-interest and corruption was “fundamentally against the party’s nature and purpose.”
His speech to the training course for senior military officers at the National Defence University in Beijing was live-streamed across the PLA’s high-level units.
“Senior military officers must take the lead in restoring and promoting the fine traditions of our party and military … It is essential to understand discipline, be clear about rules and norms, and maintain a sense of reverence,” the CCP boss and state head was quoted as saying by the state-run media.
Xi’s latest message came during the opening ceremony of the military course, created after a massive anti-corruption campaign within the PLA in recent years, which claimed the posts and careers of dozens of military Generals, including five of the seven Central Military Commission members. The CMC is the highest military decision-making body of the CCP.
“We must ensure that everyone is equal before laws and regulations, with no special treatment in compliance and no exceptions in enforcement,” the Chinese President said, adding that the PLA must “always stay pure” to meet its centenary goals.
The PLA will celebrate its centenary in August 2027, but the goals and expectations for the PLA in its 100th year since formation are still vague.
However, during a 2022 work report to the 20th CCP Congress, Xi had linked the centenary goal to the PLA’s ability to “win local wars.”
Xi had included the political catchphrase “political rectification,” which means both rooting out corruption and ideological purity in the military, in the 2026-30 five-year plan document approved by the National People’s Congress, the country’s top legislature, in March 2026.
In his speech to the training course participants, the CCP chief asked the military cadres at all levels to “consciously maintain the proper perspective, firmly stand on the side of the people, and overcome all self-serving thoughts and distractions that alienate them from the masses.”
He asked senior leaders to “take the lead” in their political life and set an example of speaking truth, cultivate the magnanimity to tolerate differing views, and “foster a robust atmosphere that encourages candid reporting, forthright advice, and courageous struggle.”
“Our party and our military have continuously grown stronger through struggles against various erroneous ideologies and conduct,” he added.
Xi has sacked commanders of all five PLA theatre commands for corruption and replaced them after they disappeared from public view over the last few years.