What Xi Jinping’s Purge of Military Elites Means for China

The Chinese military has undergone a dramatic overhaul with the expulsion in late December of nine military officials from the National People’s Congress, the country’s rubber-stamp legislature, according to the official news service Xinhua. Among those expelled—and likely to be banished from elite Chinese politics for good—were four generals from the military’s rocket force. The strategic missile responsible for the country’s conventional and nuclear arsenal has been thrown into disarray amid a monthslong anti-graft probe that goes back years and which has swept up senior leaders at the very top of the military establishment. The latest move was yet another…