"China's main geopolitical enemy isn't Japan. It isn't Russia. It isn't even the United States. In lockstep with the rising tensions in the South China Sea, Communist Party leader Xi Jinping has begun an internal war against the "flies and tigers" of military corruption, aware of the fact that no matter how many guns you own, their effectiveness comes from the people and institutions who wield them.
Yet his recent expulsion of two high ranking officials from the Communist party for graft—Zhang Youren, the former chairman of Anhui Military Industry Group, and Xu Caihou, former vice chairman of the Central Military Commission—highlights the deep, institutional hurdles China's military establishment still must overcome before they can ever truly flex their military might abroad. As China's military budget swells and threats emanate in the South and East China Seas, Beijing must begin to seriously question what the military would rather defend: their pockets or their homeland.
According to military historians Millett, Murray, and Watman, "Victory is not a characteristic of an organization but rather a result of organizational activity." Military effectiveness requires regular dialogue and coordination across the political, strategic, operational, and tactical levels of military activity, or put differently, a strong civil-military structure. A weak link in it can strip a government of its legitimacy, and lower morale and leadership to such an extent that no one is left to fight for their country. Peter Feaver described the civil-military challenge as "how to reconcile a military strong enough to do anything the civilians ask them to do with a military subordinate enough to do only what civilians authorize them to do." Thus, institutions in which political loyalties and bribes rather than education and experience becomes the basis for promotions inevitably exhibit strategic inefficiencies and in the most dire of cases, war losses…"
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