Explaining military reforms under Xi Jinping: military effectiveness, power consolidation, and party-military relations in China

ABSTRACT This article aims to take a fresh look at the relationship between party and military institutions in China by focusing on military reforms pursued under Xi Jinping. Concretely, this article attempts to answer the following questions: (1) How have party-military relations evolved during the reform era and how do scholars conceptualize this development?; (2) What distinguishes Xi’s military reforms from previous efforts made by his predecessors?; and (3) What do the processes and outcomes of the reforms suggest about the state of party-military relations and its future trajectory? This analysis shows that China’s party-military relationship during the reform era has exhibited remarkable stability, but the stability has only been achieved by granting the military substantial autonomy in the management of military affairs, creating a relationship often conceptualized as “conditional compliance.” Along the way, the accumulation of negative trends in the security environment and the perceived lack of military readiness have urged the party leadership to carry out organizational reforms to the military. The sweeping implementation of military reforms under Xi, however, has had a limited effect on party-military relations, leaving the party control over the military compromised rather than reinforced.

and explain the reform outcomes; that is, whether Xi delivered the desired changes to the pre-2012 party-military relationship -if not, why. More concretely, this study attempts to answer the following questions: (1) How have party-military relations evolved during the reform era and how do scholars conceptualize this development?; (2) What distinguishes Xi's military reforms from previous efforts made by his predecessors?; and (3) What do the processes and outcomes of the reforms suggest about the state of partymilitary relations and its future trajectory?
To address these questions, we situate the current military reforms in the context of the institutional development of party-military relations in China. Our analysis shows that the party-military relationship during the reform era has exhibited remarkable stability. However, this stability has only been achieved by granting substantial autonomy to the military in managing military affairs, creating a relationship often conceptualized as "conditional compliance." Simultaneously, the emergence of negative trends in the security environment and the perceived lack of military preparedness have urged the party leadership to carry out occasional military reforms, albeit with differing outcomes. However, the recent PLA reform under Xi Jinping is without precedent, not only regarding the range of issues covered but also in the magnitude of transformation that it brought to the military institution. We argue that this "unprecedented" nature of the reforms cannot be properly understood without considering Xi's own motivations to centralize and personalize the institutional power bequeathed to him as the party's general secretary. Paradoxically, we contend that despite -and in part due to -his personalized approach, military reforms under Xi have rendered party's control over the military further compromised rather than strengthened.
This article contributes to the literature in two ways. First, substantively it complements the existing accounts of the military reforms under Xi by shifting the focus to party-military relations. While extant studies have noted the demand for "integrated joint operations" as a central driver and explained the unfolding of specific policies in this light, less attention has been paid to another key goal of revitalizing party's military control, much less assessing the outcomes. Given that needs for joint operational capability had existed long before Xi assumed power, focusing exclusively on the imperative of enhancing military effectiveness left many important aspects of this reform, including the timing and concrete institutional steps, unexplained.
Second, this study aims to provide a reassessment of China's current status of partymilitary relations. Despite the claims that the recent reforms have enhanced the CCP's ability to supervise the military, little evidence exists that this is what actually happened. Instead, we argue that the reform outcome regarding party-military relations was the enhancement of Xi's personal authority over the PLA, which should be distinguished from the institutional authority of the party that has been bolstered and practiced by several established organizations and institutions. A different interpretation of the reform outcomes is crucial in understanding not only the future trajectory of organizational changes as well as military politics.
This article is organized as follows. The next section briefly reviews the evolution of party-military relations during the reform era and introduces some key concepts past studies presented to characterize the relationship. The third section discusses the main motivations and PLA reform processes under Xi, with a particular focus on partymilitary relations. The fourth section re-assesses the reform outcomes regarding China's civilian control system and the conclusion summarizes our argument and findings.

Literature review: the significance and evolution of party-military relations in China
Civil-military relations, a broader concept encompassing several different civilian and military relationships, are variously studied by sociologists, historians, and political scientists. Those relationships exist that between the military institution and broader society, between the military and other government bureaucracies, and between political elites and the senior military leadership at the state's apex. At a fundamental level, the perennial attention to civil-military relations stems from the assumption that militaries are exceptional actors 1 . Militaries are the actors formally mandated to defend against external threats, but they may also have internal security missions and participate in state-led oppression. The military, thus, is both a regime and the state's chief protector. But simultaneously, the military can also be a regime and state's chief threat. A military can turn its guns on the government and remove leaders by force or compromise the state's security by losing on the battlefield. Combining these dynamics generates what Feaver calls the civil-military "problematique": States must ensure the military is both submissive to civilian authority and effective in armed conflict 2 .
In China, the nature of civil-military relations, or the PLA's broad interaction with the Chinese state and society, is determined by its ties with the ruling CCP 3 . First, the military's exceptional position in the Chinese polity gains import from the immense attachment the party leadership themselves have had to military might. It traces back to the regime's birth in violent revolution, its abundant experience of military conflicts during the cold war, and its growing expansionist ambitions, which would be unattainable without potent armed forces. Second, and more importantly, the military's responsibilities and authority are solely defined and granted by the party, with the provision of regime protection as its prime mandate. These "dual roles" of external and internal coercion have long constituted the PLA's exceptionality in the policy -the "pivotalness" to the regime survival, which in turn makes it a potential threat to the regime and thus requires the party's "absolute leadership," as the party leaders phrase it.
However, the reality of party-military relations in China is far from a kind of domination that the long-standing principle of party's absolute leadership over the military would indicate. For a long time, the CCP-PLA relationship has been depicted as symbiotic 4 . While the institutional authority is created and delegated by the party, the PLA has actually secured the CCP regime twice since its founding in 1949: during the Cultural Revolution and at Tiananmen Incident on June 4, 1989 5 . Particularly concerning the latter, that the party leadership has repeatedly lauded the military for its "unwavering, faithful behaviors" in carrying out such complex political missions. It suggests the awareness within the leadership that the party supremacy over the military is not built into the system but needs to be continuously reactivated for its maintenance.
Contrarily, scholars have noted that as economic and political reforms unfolded, particularly since the mid-1990s, an evident, if subterranean, struggle among the army, party, and government has existed -with the army seeking greater autonomy from the party, the party attempting to strengthen its control of the army, and the government trying to increase its own jurisdictional oversight of the armed forces 6 . Consequently, while the struggle has resulted in incremental changes and no radical restructuring of party-military relations has been undertaken, the CCP-PLA relations have undergone a fundamental change in which existing models have lost much of their explanatory power. For example, David Shambaugh pointed out that the symbiosis model, which assumes substantial inter-penetration between the two entities, is no longer applicable due to the bifurcation of the party-army elite: senior party leaders today have little to no military experience, and military officers -both collectively and individually -rarely get involved in intra-party politics. Although this evolution is still ongoing and incomplete, it seems clear that "the PLA is moving away from its traditional communist institutional ethos." 7 Then how have observers sized up and described this new situation? Ellis Joffe, a prominent student of the Chinese military, contended that the emerging partymilitary dynamics under the leadership of Jiang Zemin could be conceptualized as conditional compliance 8 . According to this model, the military complies with civilian wishes in two respects. First, it supports the legitimacy of the rule of the CCP and its paramount leader with full political and coercive weight of the military institution itself. Second, the PLA has accepted a more circumscribed role within the system, largely staying out of nonmilitary policymaking areas and focusing on professional development. But this compliance is conditional on the military's retention of virtual autonomy in areas of corporate identity, such as military modernization or defense planning. Meanwhile, bureaucratic bargaining is now required on key policies and resource allocation issues, although this bargaining should not be understood as occurring between "equal" parties. In short, the model attempted to capture an emerging reality where military acceptance of the party's supremacy required "a complicated mix of formal institutional authority, personal persuasion, and bureaucratic bargaining over resources and influence." 9 Although illuminating some of the new and critical dimensions in the CCP-PLA interactions, this model is not flawless and may even lead to misunderstandings of the state of party-military relations. First, the model is ambiguous about the specific condition under which the military complies with the civilian authority and its circumscribed roles. The military's autonomy in areas such as defense planning is important, but this is not a new condition that has resulted from party-military interactions in the 1990s: the PLA had enjoyed autonomy in that particular realm for many years 10 . Further discussion is needed on whether there has been any discernible change in the scope and nature of the roles assigned to the military beyond that particular policy area. Second, as far as compliance is concerned, the model sees it simply as the military's acceptance of the single-party regime legitimacy, thereby failing to capture how the military acts against the wishes of the party leadership without challenging the party's formal authority. It is particularly problematic for our purposes since, if compliance refers only to the PLA's acceptance of its subordinate position concerning the CCP, understanding why the party leaders have taken pains to conduct military reforms in the first place is difficult. Simply put, the model does not explain the (political) incentives for military reforms, not to mention the specificity of reform process and outcomes.
It is beyond the aim of this analysis to build an alternative framework to explain fully the evolution of party-military relations in China. However, based on the foregoing, the following points should be clarified before we proceed to examine the military reforms under Xi. First, party-military relations in China are by nature hierarchical; the military is the agent of the party -the political principal. As party leaders frequently remind the military audiences, the PLA, as "the armed wing" of the party, should perform any duties assigned by the latter. This hierarchical structure of party-military links has remained relatively stable for the entire history of PRC and in itself constituted a key institutional foundation for the single-party rule. Second, the structural stability reveals only part of the PLA-CCP relations. The substance of party-military interactions, influenced by several factors, has significantly changed over time. Prior research has focused on some of the prominent endogenous trends: generational shifts in the elite composition, the professionalization of the officer corps, and the consequent bifurcation of the party and military elites, among others.
However, the existing literature lacks a perspective to incorporate some equally important yet mostly exogenous trends into the analysis of party-military relations. Much attention has been granted to, for example, the CCP's evolving threat perception and the subsequent efforts at military modernization. Conversely, limited attention has been given to the party's growing interest in a much broader issue of military effectiveness that constitutes the other part of the civil-military problematique, that is, how to make the army competent enough to do what the party asks them to 11 . This study posits that from this perspective, many critical aspects of the latest round of military reforms under Xi can be better understood and explained, and their implications for partymilitary relations can properly be evaluated. Of course, focusing on military effectiveness does not mean that the issue of military compliance has become irrelevant or uninteresting in the Chinese context but suggests that the party leaders have come to view the military compliance differently and military effectiveness may have become a metric to assess it 12 . Therefore, it is thus worth highlighting that military effectiveness in the Chinese context is more than operational capabilities on the battlefield but it represents a broader challenge for party leaders, ensuring that the military does not compromise their policy priorities and resource-allocation outcomes 13 .
Finally, another factor that prior research has failed to examine systematically is the incentive of the party leader to exploit on his institutionalized authority over the military to strengthen control over the party itself. While many studies have documented Xi's power consolidation, fewer studies have looked at how Xi's policy initiatives and their execution interacted with his power consolidation -a process increasingly depicted as the personalization of power 14 . Given the extant institutional arrangements that concentrate the power to exercise control over the military on the general secretary, focusing on Xi's incentives and strategies for power consolidation will likely help explain many critical aspects of the military reforms.

The baseline: party-military relations under Hu Jintao
Observers and commentators commonly characterize Hu Jintao (胡锦涛)'s years in power as a "lost decade" for economic and political reform 15 . Although there are many reasons to reject any sweeping denial of Hu's achievements 16 , evidence favoring such characterization may be found in his handling of military affairs. Specifically, compared with his predecessor, Jiang Zemin (江泽民), Hu failed to resolve the PLA's two critical organizational issues: rampant military corruption and the planned restructuring and downsizing of the PLA. This failure is somewhat curious because Hu and his administration clearly perceived profound shifts occurring in the security environment surrounding China. After all, the much-hyped America's "rebalancing" to Asia, a precursor of the moves toward what Beijing would later denounce as the anti-China coalition formation, started to unfold during the Hu era. There prevails ample evidence that the administration was aware of new challenges that it posed to China's military security. In this context, the lack of reform efforts to systematically tackle organizational problems appear to have revealed Hu's flawed control of the PLA 17 .
Of course, it is not true that Hu failed to identify and articulate structural problems faced by the PLA as a military organization. Rather, many of the key words and concepts that Xi Jinping has used to call attention to the poor state of military readiness and the necessity of reforms had already appeared in Hu's speeches to and conversations with the military audiences. For example, soon after his ascendancy to the post of the CMC chairman in 2005, Hu pointed out that despite multiple reforms under the leadership of Jiang Zemin, the PLA still lacked organizational structures to meet the operational needs of informatized warfare, calling for command and logistics systems to be suited for "integrated joint operation." 18 Moreover, the Hu leadership introduced a new concept of "system of systems" which addressed the unintended but serious fallouts of the individual service-centered policy of informatization in the Jiang era. Although the size was now appropriate due to Jiang's 200 thousands reduction campaign, the force structure and the inter-service and inter-department structures still remain less rational.
However, Hu's message was less clear in specifying and tackling problems concerning party control of the military. Rather than addressing structural flaws in party's control and monitoring mechanisms, the CMC leadership under Hu pursued measures to strengthen party authority by improving the quality of the party membership as well as enhancing the party connection to the rank and file 19 . For example, in February 2009, the General Political Department (总政治部, GPD) issued regulations to standardize the process by which party cadres are recruited and employed. Also, in 2005 the CMC issued its first set of regulations on party branches with guidance on the structure, responsibilities, and tasks of the party branches. Yet it seemed clear that these traditional approaches to "revitalizing" party control were not enough to deal with the widespread corruption that had revealed new challenges, particularly among top echelons in the military leadership 20 .
What then explains the near absence of efforts to implement systematic reforms to the military organization in the Hu era? An easy answer would be the circumstances that made it difficult for Hu to take a bold initiative to military reform, most notably his delayed ascendancy into the CMC chairmanship 21 . Hu failed to build a broad base of institutional support, facing a situation in which "Hu held office but did not wield power," which is particularly true of his position in the military 22 . On a more personal level, the lack of reform initiative can be attributed to Hu's own incremental, technocratic approach to policy process.
In short, during the Hu era, the CCP deepened reforms that bolstered its ability to professionalize the military. The reforms aimed to strengthen the CCP as an organization, render party-military relations more functional and resilient, and improve the CCP's ability to provide strategic leadership. These changes have enabled a greater degree of dynamism and flexibility in the CCP's PLA leadership. However, the reforms have also encouraged a fragmentation of party authority along national and military lines. This fragmentation of authority, exasperated by the persistence of weak state and military institutions and the CCP's overall political vulnerabilities, introduces new challenges to ensuring party leadership of the military.

Military reforms in motion: motivations and processes
The preceding section suggests that Xi's impulse to initiate and push through military reforms can be regarded as a part of collective response to the situation where the PLA has lost much of organizational discipline and coherence, as well as the shared sense of insecurity about the worsening security environment. After briefly reviewing Xi's own perception of the external strategic environment and the state of military readiness, this section turns to the implementation process with special emphasis on Xi's strategies of military reforms. Rather than providing a comprehensive account, this section describes how Xi coped with a set of systemic problems in party-military relations.

Motivations
Although military preparedness has been a common theme running through military reforms throughout PRC history, the current reform is distinct from past efforts in several respects. First, there was a real concern among the CCP leadership regarding China's deteriorating strategic environment 23 . As noted earlier, the Hu administration had perceived and started to respond to the U.S. efforts to reinforce military posture and alliance cooperation in the Asia-Pacific. Urging the PLA to share the sense of insecurity from the onset, Xi never hesitated to convey his own concerns regarding worsening security landscape in the region. In his earlier speeches to the PLA, Xi repeatedly called attention to the "profound changes that transpired in both domestic and international security environments" and provocations from "a great power" seeking to encircle and constrain China 24 .
Second, and more importantly, there was a strengthened demand that the PLA should be prepared to fight and win a real war that will likely unfold in highly complicated, multi-domain theaters. Although the military leadership has long recognized the urgency of improving the PLA's joint operational capabilities, it is now Xi himself who is demanding that the PLA enhance its actual operational ability and focus its energies on warfighting. Specifically, Xi repeatedly underscored that the most important criterion for implementing a reform initiative is whether it will unleash combat power and meet the "warfighting standard." Additionally, as discussed at greater length below, Xi has been the party leader to highlight the PLA's lack of combat experience in arguably the most blunt and straightforward way. The following passage from The Selected Important Expositions of Xi Jinping on National Defense and Army Building makes the point indelibly clear.
Our army has not fought wars for many years and frankly speaking, we do not know much and deep about what modern warfare is like and how to fight and command it. What is more worrying is that some comrades in the army do not have a strong concept of war in their minds, and their hearts are not used to study warfare 25 . Politically, one of the key motivations that stand out from Xi's initial reform agendas is what David Finkelstein refers to as "bringing the PLA inside the CCP's tent, " that is, reducing the military's "bureaucratic exceptionalism." 26 As discussed earlier, the PLA has been left mostly to its internal devices to set its own institutional priorities with little or no oversight or accountability from outside the organization. This significant institutional autonomy has resulted in two problems for party control over the PLA: rampant corruption in the officer corps (especially at its highest levels) and the deeply vested bureaucratic interests that have restrained reform efforts to to enhance the PLA's capabilities as a warfighting force 27 .

Policy process and implementation strategy
The overall process leading up to the launch of military reforms is relatively welldocumented. Plans for military reform, along with other policy agendas across diverse areas, were rolled out at the Third Plenum of the 18 th Party Congress in November 2013. Yet, unlike many key agendas articulated on the same occasion, military reforms proceeded with remarkable speed and vigor. The CMC's Leading Small Group for Military Reform (国防和军队改革领导小组, LSGMR), which convened the first meeting in March 2014, took the lead in launching and putting the reform on a track. In July 2015, the LSGMR passed and submitted a general proposal on military reforms to the CMC and the Politburo Standing Committee of the CCP. Following the passing of a proposal for reforming command structure, a major breakthrough for policy implementation came when the CMC promulgated the authoritative "Opinion on Deepening Military Reform" (the Opinion) in January 2016. Large-scale military reforms have been since executed according to the plan, as summarized earlier in the study 28 .
However, the striking boldness and swiftness of the policy process begs a question: What made it possible for Xi and his reform team to push ahead with such a radical, comprehensive reform package and actually pull it off in such a short time period? Of course, an easy answer may lie in the motivations discussed in the preceding section: the widely shared sense of crisis regarding China's shifting security environment and the lack of military readiness. Or it can be argued that what Xi and his generals did was just a continuation of what had already been initiated and progressed under the previous administrations. Yet, aside from a series of conventional issues tackled by the past rounds of reform, in light of institutional developments of CCP-PLA relations, three features merit particular emphasis in the policy implementation process.

Redefining military responsibilities
The most salient feature of the recent reforms under Xi is the scope and extent of the civilian leader's intervention in the actual policy process. Among multiple aspects, particularly in light of party-military relations, is Xi's conscious attempt to redefine the military's responsibilities. If the essence of civilian control, as Samuel Huntington suggests, is a "clear distinction between political and military responsibilities and the institutional subordination of the latter to the former," 29 Xi, at least conceptually, appears to have recognized the significance of rebuilding systems of civilian control of the army.
Such a position manifested in his early conversations with senior military officers even before the reform plans were officially circulated. For instance, shortly after assuming power, Xi stressed that "the military is first and foremost a fighting force that exists to fight wars. Although our military has assumed different tasks in different periods, its fundamental function as a fighting force has never changed." 30 Although admitting PLA's distinctive nature as an institution assigned with multiple missions encompassing diverse areas of warfighting, political work, and economic production, Xi emphasized that the institution's core mission and resource should be located in warfighting, which in turn forms the basis for the performance of other missions. Noticeably, this qualification of military responsibilities explicitly assessed "diversified military tasks," a phrase forged by the military during Hu's tenure to conceptualize and justify the PLA's noncombat activities 31 .
Xi's emphasis on the significance of the warfighting task is not just rhetorical; in fact, it takes on a substantive meaning since the core mission defines the criterion, or warfighting capability, by which "every aspect of organizational and individual activities must be evaluated." 32 It is contrary to Hu Jintao's "new historic missions" that still emphasize an array of peacetime duties, including PLA's traditional role of maintaining domestic stability and protecting the CCP. According to Scobell and Nathan, although the "new historic missions" highlighted the new challenges the PLA should prepare for, this also created a tension between the continued domestic demands on the PLA and the expanded list of responsibilities at and beyond China's borders 33 .
In this context, Xi began reciting the mantras emphasizing that the PLA must be "prepared for military struggle," which proved to be a savvy move based on the knowledge that such a call would be well-received by most military personnel. After the military had been focused on what many in the PLA believed were largely superfluous noncombat duties, greater attention to warfighting would mean a return to what many soldiers firmly believe is their primary mission. Moreover, Xi's redefinition of the core mission would help counteract the disaffection over the ongoing high-profile anticorruption campaign in the PLA that has generated considerable negative publicity.
In short, if the rule no. 1 of party-military relations is "the army obeys the party, but the CCP will not tell the PLA what to do," 34 apparently Xi is not a faithful follower of the rule. Compared to his predecessors, especially Hu Jintao, Xi has been far more outspoken and specific in communicating the party (and his) expectations of the military. Of course, notably, he has not intended to negate the army's corporate interests; in fact, his demands generally resonate with -or perhaps partially stems from -those from the military leadership as well as the rank and file. Enhancing joint operational capability is one of such themes that have long received military attention. Yet, professional soldiers are not allowed to raise or even articulate their preference over, most notably, the nature and priorities of military responsibilities. In this regard, Xi distinguished himself from Hu and Jiang by setting the preparation for military struggle as the top priority of military activities. A possible consequence includes is considerable support within the PLA leadership for reforms that will improve PLA combat capability, despite the potential negative impact on some organizational and individual interests.

Personalization of the CMC
Although military reforms under Xi have addressed extensive institutional and policy issues, at the very heart of the multifaceted endeavor was overhauling the CMC structure. Reforming the CMC is critically important to reinforcing party-military connection since the organization sits at the apex of the parallel party hierarchy and supposedly embodies the party's institutional supremacy over the military 35 . However, rather than constructing a functioning monitoring mechanism, the essence of the reform efforts lies in the concentration of authority and power in the hands of the chairman in ways that undermine the already weak institutional basis of civilian control of the military.
The principles and processes of restructuring CMC are well-documented. The Opinion on Deepening Reform of National Defense and the Armed Forces, adopted on November 28 2015, declared that the reform aims at streamlining the PLA's structure based on the following principle: "the CMC has overall responsibility, the Theatre Commands are in charge of operations, and the Military Services are in charge of force building." Arguably the most critical move for promoting organizational restructuring was the disbandment of the four general departments, which, for decades, played a major role as the institutional filter between the CMC and the PLA organizations. Before the reforms under Xi, the CMC exercised command and control over the seven MRs and other units at the same level through the general departments. The 15 new organs created by the dissolution are now under the CMC's direct guidance and lost the status of "headquarter and chief organ" (总部领导机关) and the accompanying autonomy that the general headquarters had previously enjoyed 36 . As discussed further below, new military discipline inspection committee has been placed under the CMC, with inspection teams regularly being sent to military units. The new CMC also has an audit office, a political and legal affairs commission, and military courts and procuratorates, units that were formerly directed by the General Political Department or the General Logistics Department (总装备部).
Although the reforms aimed to enhance the CMC's ability to dictate and supervise military personnel and activities, it is less certain that the organizational shakeup has proceeded in ways that generate much-proclaimed checks and balances among the new organs of the expanded CMC. Instead, what Xi has pushed forward is to strengthen his personal authority and power within the military. Examples abound. First, a renewed emphasis on the chairman responsibility system is essentially a rhetorical move that introduced no meaningful institutional change to the party-military relations. Historically, it was highlighted when the party leaders perceived an internal challenge to their rule; Xi's reiteration of it is clearly more political than military or managerial. The long-standing fragmentation of CCP's organizational leadership over the PLA has remained unimproved as Xi continues to uphold Mao's formula of "The Politburo run[ning] political affairs and the CMC military affairs." 37 No other civilian Politburo member is authorized to handle PLA affairs and no party organs are allowed to intrude into PLA management, i.e., personnel appointments and legal, disciplinary affairs.
Another example of Xi's shaping the CMC reform trajectory in his favor can be found in the personnel composition of the CMC leadership. The new configuration, announced in October 2017 at the first plenary session of the 19th Central Committee, "shattered previous paradigms of military leadership." 38 Not only was the number of members reduced from eleven to seven, but there was a wholesale change in the assignment of seats by office, reflecting Xi's attempts to reverse the CMC institutionalization as a top-level coordination body. This trend manifested itself in the leadership lineup under Hu Jintao, who approved a change that added the services commanders as ex officio members. Put differently, before Xi's arrival, the CMC was evolving into a normal party committee in which the principle of "division of responsibilities among leading members" guides decision-making 39 . This collectivist arrangement might hinder fast policy reaction but may constrain the CMC chairman's influence by retrenching the informational asymmetries. Along with the integration of the general departments into an expanded CMC, Xi made a radical change to the composition of the CMC membership, altering the power equation in his personal favor.
Of equal relevance to the personalization of the CMC is the appointment of Zhong Shaojun (钟绍军), a longtime civilian aide to Xi, as the director of the CMC General Office (办公厅). Zhong followed Xi to Beijing, was appointed deputy director with a military rank of senior colonel, and subsequently promoted to major general before being named as General Office director in 2018. The General Office is the key CMC staff organization responsible for ensuring compliance with CMC directives and controlling information on what the larger CMC bureaucracy is doing. Although not without precedents 40 , installing a civilian aide in the head of General Office was particularly salient in the CMC reform context that undoubtedly enhanced the relative power of General Office vis-à-vis other newly established departments. More importantly, the Office of Military Reform (改革办), the central organ for reform implementation, was set up within the General Office, reflecting Xi's intention to push through the reform against opposition from the powerful general departments 41 .
In summary, Xi revived the CMC model as a personalistic fiefdom as a strategy to push ahead with the military reforms as well as to enhance personal power and authority in the party leadership. From the perspective of party-military relations, however, it is important to note that these moves do not necessarily constitute a systemic reform designed to enhance the quality of party control over the military.

Centralizing corruption monitoring system
Another key mechanism Xi mobilized to push the reform through bureaucratic resistance is conducting continual campaigns against corruption. Military corruption, as noted earlier, was a long-standing issue that had caught the attention of the previous party and military leadership. Yet, for Xi, fighting corruption was not just a key reform agenda but a strategy to enforce the reforms by imposing stricter political discipline, especially among the senior PLA officers. Indeed, the All-Army Political Work Conference, in which Xi addressed in a detailed and straightforward way the state of indiscipline of senior officers, was held in October 2014 as Xi and his reform-minded generals prepared for the launch of reforms and circulated earlier drafts among the officer corps.
Notably, Xi has used the CMC apparatus to launch and oversee the anti-corruption drive, rather than delegating authority to the General Political Department. Specifically, Xi strengthened the CMC's ability to organize inspection teams that are dispatched to grassroots units to conduct detailed investigations and audits, especially targeting senior officials 42 . This has included establishing a CMC leading group on inspection work headed by Vice-Chairman Xu Qiliang (许其亮), which is responsible for building up a comprehensive inspection system. Consequently, dozens of generals have been investigated or convicted of corruption, including Xu Caihou (徐才厚) and Guo Boxiong (郭 伯雄), the two former vice chairmen of the CMC.
While Xi has stressed the need to build an institutionalized system for combating corruption, Xi's emphasis was not simply on enhancing the party's role in overseeing the military. Conversely, the party committees and branches within the army, officially the core institutions of party control over the military, have been criticized for being incapable of supervising and punishing the misbehaviors of senior officers. According to Xi, "most of the corrupt elements were either uncovered by higher-level inspection teams or reported out by the masses, while the party committee at the same level found out almost no problems, some cases even being covered up." 43 Consequently, Xi's solution was the separation and centralization of the discipline inspection sector, a functional component of a party committee, putting it under the direct leadership of the newly established CMC discipline inspection committee (纪律监察委员会).
Centralizing the supervisory power is critical to reform implementation in two respects. First, the inspection teams sent by the CMC are naturally assigned to monitor the state of compliance with reform-related directives as their core task. Notably, the CMC work guidance teams, created within the General Office to guide the policy implementation in high-level units like the central departments and military regions, were supposed to include the members of inspection teams and conduct inspection works simultaneously 44 . Second, the centralized discipline inspection system was expected to function as a separate chain of information that reaches Xi directly. It supposedly provides an independent assessment of the performance of commanders, political commissars, and party committees 45 .

Outcomes and implications
With key political motivations and mechanisms of policy implementation clarified, this section briefly discusses the outcomes of the reforms and their implications for China's party-military relations.

(Further) hollowing out of civilian control
Although the reforms under Xi officially aimed to revitalize party control and discipline within the PLA, perhaps based on a shared concern about the lack of military readiness, it is hard to conclude at this point of writing that the CCP-PLA connection has been strengthened in ways that the former now exercises actual civilian control over the latter. Throughout the reform era, the military institution in China has been left to its own devices to manage itself with little or no oversight and accountability from outside. The latest military reform only reconfirms that this extreme institutional autonomy is a tough nut to crack and that things will not change in the coming years. Despite conscious attempts to integrate the PLA reform into a larger context of overall national reforms, there is no indication that any nonmilitary party or state organ has intervened in the formulation and implementation of military reforms.
Instead, this analysis shows that civilian control of the military in China has stagnated or further weakened due to Xi's increasingly personalized use of the only civilian institution allowed to command and control the military: the chair of the CMC. As noted earlier, Xi's emphasis on the chairman responsibility system, which some analysts mistakenly claim to be part of institution building efforts to strengthen the party's control of the military 46 , involves no substantial change to the preexisting system of party control over the military. More fundamentally, the current institutional arrangement of partymilitary relations will likely continue to inhibit the impulse to incorporate external oversight, whether from party or state institutions, by incentivizing the CMC chair to personalize the control over the military.
Despite being a potential exception, centralizing the discipline inspection system does not suggest that the newly established organizations (the CMC discipline inspection committee and patrol teams) will act as a genuinely independent actor whose institutional interests are distinct from those of the armed forces. Indeed, compared with the civilian sectors, the number of uncovered corrupt cases in the military realm is reportedly limited in scale, possibly indicating a measured approach to avert possible backlash from the PLA 47 . A more effective, permanent institutional solution to preventing corruption, as Xi himself points out, will be the further legalization of military governance 48 . Yet apart from the future impact on military behaviors, the legal framework for military affairs is where progress is least observed in the recent reforms under Xi.

Uncertainty in military effectiveness
As far as military effectiveness is concerned, the latest military reform under Xi Jinping has delivered substantial changes to the organizational structures that have long been considered as a major obstacle to an effective planning, training and conduct of joint operations. Specifically, a clearer and narrower definition of military responsibilities and the command-and-control system restructuring undoubtedly created a favorable condition for the PLA to transform itself into a more effective joint force suited to undertaking its central mission: fight and win wars under informatized conditions. Still, those results are by no means guaranteed. Enhancing jointness is a complex endeavor -it is not just about having the right organizations in place but about fostering a "joint mentality" to think across multiple services and operate together 49 . Reforms carried out between 2015 and 2018 have established the system to enable stronger coordination among the services and reduce delays in decision-making on the ground. Yet several constraints remain, including the Leninist institutions within the PLA that may continue to limit the commanders' ability to be flexible or innovative on the battlefield and slow the pace of prosecuting joint operations 50 . Despite recent efforts at streamlining the line of command while delegating power to theater commands, it remains to be seen how swiftly and effectively these moves will lead to the PLA's enhanced ability to execute joint operations.
Yet, a more fundamental concern about military effectiveness can be derived from the personalized nature of the reform drive. Military reforms under Xi have demonstrated how the differences in the party leader's personal preference and strategy regarding the management of military affairs could produce different organizational outcomes. The reforms undertaken without altering the existing institutional framework of party-military relations indicate the potential vulnerability of the reform outcomes to a decline of leadership attention or sudden changes in policy preference.

Conclusion
This study examined the motivations, policy processes, and outcomes of military reforms undertaken by Xi Jinping with a particular focus on the evolving state of party-military relations. While marking a crucial milestone in the PLA's long-term process of developing a modern joint operations capability, Xi's military reforms have resulted in less than impressive results in revitalizing and strengthening party control over the military. To explain the actual policy implementation and, more importantly, the striking divergence in the reform outcomes, this article focuses on the two critical motivations behind the launch and implementation of the latest reforms: achieving military effectiveness and advancing power consolidation.
In doing so, this article challenges the common view that Xi's alleged attempts to reassert party's authority over the PLA have largely been successful in tackling key issues related to the civilian control problem in a way unknown to his predecessors. Instead, this study finds that most of Xi's initiatives and "innovations" during the reform process do not constitute a solution to the structural flaws deeply rooted in the CCP's civilian control system. Specifically, we argue that emphasizing the chairman responsibility system did little to strengthen the institutional foundation of party control over the military. Rather, what the move did intend to achieve was enhancing Xi's personal authority over the PLA, creating valuable momentum for pushing the reform through potential bureaucratic resistance within the military.
At a more fundamental level, this study casts doubts on the assumption that, apart from upholding the principle of the party's absolute leadership over the armed forces, the CCP leader is inherently incentivized to strengthen the party's control of the military. Our analysis suggests that the current institutional arrangements of party-military relations in China, which concentrates the authority to command the PLA on the general secretary, would give him the incentive to stick to the status quo and, if necessary, enhance the monopoly of the power. Given the shift in the fundamental nature of elite politics under the leadership of Xi Jinping, this evolving state of party-military relations will likely have profound implications not only for military capability development but for Chinese elite politics.