Elder Statesmen Secretly Order Liu Yuan to Restructure the Military in 5 Areas; Military Daily Removes Chairman Responsibility System! Generals in the Xi Era Face Scrutiny [Jiang Feng Vision 20260721 Issue 441]

The video analyzes the PLA Daily's consecutive omission of the "Military Commission Chairman Responsibility System" and its focus on grassroots issues such as airborne troops' training, military housing, research projects, and office printing, suggesting a shift in the military's management methods. The video then recounts Liu Yuan's experiences in the military, proposing that elder statesmen might be using Liu Yuan to push for the restoration of the CMC's collective leadership, the re-evaluation of generals, and adjustments to the military's professional and promotion systems. The publication of a case study on tolerance for error in the PLA Daily is presented as evidence that these changes have already begun.

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Welcome back to Jiang Feng Vision. Hello friends. The "Military Commission Chairman Responsibility System," a constraint that has weighed on the heads of all PLA generals for a full ten years, has disappeared from the PLA Daily. From July 11th to the 20th, for ten consecutive days, these seven characters suddenly vanished completely from the newspaper's pages.

Even more bizarrely, starting around July 14th, the PLA Daily began publishing what were previously considered internal scandals that grassroots cadres dared not report: airborne troops exposing themselves by firing signal flares during night training; a new company commander explicitly refusing to take over old projects; and a naval headquarters using eight toner cartridges in a single month just to print documents for inspections.

The pages of the PLA Daily have always been politically arranged; every word and every picture must be approved. Would these absurdities dare be published by the editors? Would grassroots cadres dare to sign their names? Without permission from above, they would not dare. Therefore, the anomalies below signify the intentions from above.

So, what exactly are the intentions from above? The answer is already written within these scandals. It's not that someone has suddenly become concerned about a leaking apartment building, nor are they distressed about the printing room using a few extra toner cartridges, nor are they specifically aiming to correct a single night jump training exercise. What is happening is that the PLA Daily is being used to issue a public assessment of failure for the military's management methods over the past decade.

The "Military Commission Chairman Responsibility System," which involves one person making the decision and layers of accountability below, is no longer sustainable. What has it done to scare the cadres? Let's look at the four confessions that the PLA Daily itself has published.

On July 20th, page 10 of the PLA Daily reported on a night infiltration training exercise by an airborne unit. This type of training emphasizes moving stealthily under the enemy's nose. But how does the Chinese military train? To ensure absolute safety and to avoid broken legs upon landing, and to not affect the instructors' performance evaluations, this elite unit actually fired a white signal flare into the sky before parachuting.

In actual combat, firing a signal flare during a night jump is equivalent to shouting through a loudspeaker: "I am here, open fire on me." The supervising leader is criticizing this in the newspaper, essentially making themselves a live target for the enemy. But can the grassroots officers be blamed for this? Training for war like a circus performance, jumping with signal flares, is their most rational and only choice to protect their careers.

Because nothing can go wrong; once something goes wrong, the relevant personnel will be dismissed. As for how many people will die on the battlefield later, that's a matter for tomorrow; it cannot be held accountable now.

On July 19, the front page of the military newspaper featured a military research topic left unfinished by a former company commander of a brigade of the 83rd Group Army, along with several years' worth of valuable data. When the new company commander took office, he should have continued the work. But what did he do? He shelved the initial data and chose to start a new project with a highly similar direction. This way, if problems arise in the future, he would take responsibility himself, but any success would be his own.

Facing the military newspaper reporter, he spoke a hard truth: If it goes well, it's because of the solid foundation laid by my predecessor; if it goes poorly, it's all my responsibility. In this manner, the entire army's research topics and equipment development are being stunted and falling behind due to this internal friction of starting over.

Now, let's look at the Chongqing Corps of the People's Armed Police. The apartment buildings where officers and soldiers live are old and could collapse at any moment. Plaster from the ceiling has fallen directly onto the beds of visiting family members. Improving housing is a matter of course. Four consecutive improvement plans were brought to the party committee for discussion, but the detachment's party committee always ended with the same phrase: "The timing is not right."

Is this true? Someone at the meeting finally spoke the truth. Whether the building leaks or not might not be immediately traceable to anyone. However, once renovation is to begin, tens of millions in funding require names to be attached to every stage, from project approval, bidding, procurement, to acceptance. If the budget is slightly overspent, or furniture is upgraded by one level, or a procedural step is skipped, the audit and disciplinary committee can trace back through the signatures.

Building the houses well might not be credited to you, but a slight mistake in the procedures could cost you your official hat. Therefore, they would rather let the officers and soldiers continue to live in dilapidated housing than have their names recorded in the project archives.

Finally, let's look at a certain station of the Naval Aviation University. This unit provides airport fuel, communication, maintenance, and logistical support for flight training. However, the busiest place here is not the runway or the hangars, but the printing room, which is extremely busy all day long, requiring seven to eight toner cartridges to be replaced each month.

The printed materials are not operational data. Most of them are duplicate copies for record-keeping (five copies each), inspection ledgers, study records, and ideological reports. Why so many printouts? Because when superiors inspect, if a ledger is missing or a signature is absent, responsibility can immediately fall on specific individuals.

So, everyone prefers to print hundreds of extra pages in preparation. The result is that cadres spend a large amount of time on these tasks, leaving far too little time for actual flight training, airport support, and combat coordination.

This is the answer delivered by the system of the Chairman of the Central Military Commission's responsibility. One person at the top makes the decisions, and everyone below learns to avoid responsibility. Ultimately, the safest survival strategy for the entire army is not to do things well, but to lie flat.

The military newspaper is now publishing these issues collectively, forcing the entire army to admit that the high-pressure accountability under the Chairman of the Central Military Commission's responsibility system has turned responsibility into irresponsibility. This is the true purpose of the military newspaper's ten consecutive days of exposing scandals.

Why did no one dare to speak up in the past? Because these issues would eventually trace back to the same place. Anyone who dared to say that the troop management methods established after the military reforms in the past decade had caused problems would risk being branded with the most severe label: you are opposing the Chairman of the Central Military Commission's responsibility system, challenging the supreme commander.

Now that someone has allowed the military newspaper to publish these issues collectively, one after another, it is equivalent to telling the entire army: in the past, whoever exposed shortcomings suffered misfortune; now, whoever exposes shortcomings has someone protecting them from behind.

So, who exactly is protecting them from behind? The answer is the CCP's elder council.

Why would the elders give the military newspaper this umbrella of protection? Because this system has managed the military into an army where no one dares to give orders, no one dares to sign, and no one dares to take responsibility for failure. During peacetime, the troops appear orderly with loud slogans, but who would dare to make a decisive decision on the battlefield? Who would dare to take responsibility for a training accident or equipment failure?

Not to mention, this accountability machine continues to purge people. Former senior military officers' secretaries, staff officers, corps commanders, and division commanders who expressed different opinions on professional matters could be accused of not being politically correct. As long as a project fails, the budget is exceeded, or an accident occurs during training, the person in charge might be pursued all the way down, tracing back to their political protector.

If this continues, it will not just be a few generals falling, but the entire network of relationships that the elders have established within the military. Therefore, what the elders need to do now is to liberate the military from the control of one person and return it to the collective leadership of the Central Military Commission and professional military officers.

However, most of the elders are in their eighties and nineties. They can provide political protection, but they cannot be at the Bayi Building every day. They need someone who can command respect within the military, whom subordinates are willing to listen to, whose status is sufficiently high that the supreme commander cannot easily label them, and who does not have his own ambitions. The elders have ultimately chosen Liu Yuan.

Why is Liu Yuan suitable? He is the son of Liu Shaoqi. In 1969 Liu Shaoqi was tortured to death in Kaifeng, Henan, and the name on the cremation certificate was changed to Liu Weihuang, with the occupation listed as unemployed, and he had no relatives nearby. This case is a historical injustice that the CCP itself has admitted.

Therefore Liu Yuan has a layer of political armor within the Party that others do not have. Anyone who wants to deal with him by ordinary means must first answer a very ugly question: Liu Shaoqi’s son is exposing problems in the military, why are you suppressing him? Do you intend to launch another Cultural Revolution?

Not to mention, Liu Yuan also has a good reputation in the military. He previously worked in the Armed Police and the General Logistics Department, long opposed corruption in the armed forces, and is personally very clean. Many career officers may not agree with all his proposals, but they believe one thing: Liu Yuan is not after money, nor is he trying to raise a private cadre of generals for himself.

Moreover, the style of exposing family scandals in this military newspaper suggests that Liu Yuan may be carrying out an overall deployment, because it is very similar to his past way of operating.

This is a method rarely seen in the army. In December 2011, the Central Military Commission held an expanded meeting. At that time, Vice Minister of the General Logistics Department Gu Junshan was backed by Xu Caihou, Guo Boxiong, and an entire network of buying and selling positions and embezzling military assets.

Many people know Gu Junshan had problems, but no one dared to confront him publicly at a CMC meeting. Liu Yuan did. He brought a photo of Gu Junshan’s luxurious general’s mansion built in Puyang, Henan, into the hall and smashed it on the table in front of various military leaders: This is the person you have been protecting, this is how rotten the General Logistics Department has become. Anyone who wants to oppose the investigation of Gu Junshan can do so, but first explain how the manor in the photo came to be.

Such an approach is extremely rare inside the CCP. The Party usually handles problems by first defining them from the top, then gathering evidence, seeing who can be moved and who cannot, and then deciding how far the case will go. Liu Yuan does the opposite: he puts the evidence on the table first, forces the leadership to respond, and forces everyone to pick a side.

But Liu Yuan’s daring to smash those photos back then was not only because his surname is Liu. He also had the backing of Hu Jintao. At that time, Guo Boxiong and Xu Caihou long controlled personnel and profit distribution in the military; Hu Jintao was nominally the CMC chairman but in practice could not intervene easily.

By tearing open the Gu Junshan case, Liu Yuan created a crack in the Guo‑Xu system for Hu Jintao. Without political insurance from the highest CCP leadership, even as Liu Shaoqi’s son Liu Yuan could not withstand the backlash from the General Logistics Department and the military political work system.

Thus Liu Yuan’s past tactics always had two parts: the top gave him an umbrella, and he exposed the rotten accounts below. Today that scene is playing out again, only the umbrella that was once held by Hu Jintao is now held by Hu Jintao, Wen Jiabao, and the entire veteran collective, and Liu Yuan’s responsibility is much larger than fifteen years ago.

This time the CCP’s veteran council, the decision‑making coordination body, issued five concrete core orders to the army.

The first order restores collective leadership of the CMC and abolishes one‑person rule. Previously all promotions, procurements, and operational plans were first reviewed by the commander’s secretaries and senior civilian staff, and the commander alone decided. Now major military decisions must be taken back to the CMC plenary for collective discussion and voting, and the CMC chairman no longer has an absolute veto.

That is why the military newspaper did not mention the CMC chairman responsibility system for ten days, because in practice the system is being dismantled.

The second order quietly restores the professional functions of the four headquarters and the seven major military regions. The 2016 reform split the General Staff, General Political, General Logistics, and General Armaments into fifteen departments to make them check each other, which resulted in no one being accountable when problems arose and the command system collapsed.

The current move is not to re‑hang the old names, but to restore the professional leading functions of these four systems: command belongs to command, political work to political work, logistics to logistics, technology to technology, and no longer let non‑specialists supervise professional commanders.

The third order tasks Liu Yuan with overseeing political work discipline and revitalizing the army. Liu Yuan’s authorization is to serve as acting CMC vice‑chairman responsible for political work, at least until the 21st Party Congress. The coordination body gave him a very clear mission: stop internal purges and help the army regain vitality.

Liu Yuan’s current task is to use his prestige to reconsolidate the shaken commanders. To restore morale, the hardest cut is made to the personnel list.

This is the fourth secret order, to re‑screen two batches of officers. The first batch consists of professional career soldiers who, over the past ten years, were deemed insufficiently loyal for voicing professional dissent and were therefore suppressed, marginalized, or even forced into early retirement. As long as they are of appropriate age and have solid expertise, they will be immediately politically vetted, recalled, and reinstated.

The second batch comprises obedient officers who, over the past ten years, rose through the ranks by writing papers and flattering superiors, leveraging secretarial connections close to the command staff. Each of these will be re‑examined one by one; anyone found professionally unqualified or merely professing loyalty will be decisively removed from command positions.

The fifth secret order establishes a normal promotion system and abolishes the practice of secretaries supervising troops. The kind of civilian interference exemplified by Zhong Shaojun, who had no military record but entered the Central Military Commission through a personal secretary role and even remotely commanded generals, must be completely stopped.

Red‑second‑generation and red‑third‑generation status can no longer be a shortcut to promotion. Military advancement must follow strict procedures based on combat achievements and performance evaluations. The army obeys the Party’s collective leadership and will never obey any individual.

These five orders together constitute a cease‑fire and repair plan. Using this overt strategy, they are turning a ten‑year‑torn force from a private army of individuals into a professional force controlled by career soldiers.

How will these five orders be implemented? It requires specific operatives. We are watching the two generals who control the entire army’s discipline and personnel files: one is Central Military Commission Discipline Inspection Committee Secretary Zhang Shengmin, the other is the newly empowered star of the Navy Political Work Department, Hu Yuhai.

In the past, their work involved wielding the big stick, using black material to force officers to write papers and profess loyalty. Now, under Liu Yuan’s direction, these two officials who manage discipline and archives have quietly begun rewriting the army’s rules.

They have written exemption and fault‑tolerance into the regulations, telling professional soldiers who want to return to combat and sign off on work: go ahead, as long as you do not violate the rules of collective leadership, we will shield you from Beijing’s political purges.

The first case has already been published. What does the army’s discipline inspection committee normally do? When a disciplinary case reaches the committee, the penalty can only be increased, never reduced. Yet on July 20 the Military Daily reported the following incident.

During a naval NCO school inspection and rectification, an instructor named Wang volunteered for a project no one else dared to take. Because an urgent task intervened, the project was completed four months late. The rectification suggestions were drafted, and normally the responsible person would receive a criticism and education, as in previous years, with no further scrutiny.

This time, however, the school’s discipline inspection committee returned the rectification suggestions, citing a blanket approach without inquiry, which discouraged the staff and deviated from the original purpose of the rectification. After a re‑investigation, the case was downgraded to a verbal reminder, and the fault‑tolerance exemption list was revised accordingly.

You can see that the accountability machine even thinks the punishment is too heavy. But the machine will not brake on its own; the braking order has arrived. Moreover, the fact that this story made it into the Military Daily itself serves as a notice to all officers still on the fence: exemption and fault‑tolerance are real, and the discipline inspection committee knows about those who dare to work.

Does giving Liu Yuan such extensive authority mean he can act arbitrarily? The coordinating bodies impose extremely strict limits on Liu Yuan’s power. He is not authorized to move even a single heavy‑armor regiment to Beijing at will.

Deploying heavy troops is a matter that changes the nation’s destiny and, according to regulations, must be approved by a collective vote of the coordinating body. Within this body, Deng Pufang and Liu Yuan may favor a military showdown, but seasoned strategists like Zeng Qinghong advocate first resolving the issue through political negotiation.

Therefore, Liu Yuan cannot directly mobilize troops to pressure the leadership; he can only act step by step within the bounds set by the elders: first stop the ongoing purge of officers, then revise cadre assessment and accountability methods, then remove the personal loyalty slogans from the Military Daily, and gradually reclaim personnel, discipline, and propaganda authority—previously controlled by commanders and their secretaries—back to the collective Central Military Commission.

The commander’s position remains, and the Chairman’s badge still hangs, but who he promotes, who he punishes, what the Military Daily says, and to whom the troops pledge loyalty can no longer be decided by him alone.

This uses the army’s internal meetings, documents, personnel, and disciplinary procedures to slowly strip him of actual military power.

Soon it will be August 1, Army Day. In previous years, the Army Day editorial was a grand loyalty showcase under the Chairman’s responsibility system. This year, when that editorial appears, we will watch closely with you to count how many instances of the responsibility system remain.

If even these seven characters cannot find a foothold, it means that the generals at the August First Building and Xishan have completely reclaimed military power. The civilian commander can still sit in a high position, but his chief secretary, his pen, and his high-pressure accountability will no longer be able to interfere with the future of this army.

However, the real problem with this army, which the military newspaper still dares not fully expose today, is that it is still the party's gun, not the nation's army. As long as the generals stand on the sidelines of internal party struggles, they will have to be buried along with political purges.

In peacetime, more generals have fallen than died on the battlefield. The commander attributes this to the corruption in the army, but the army will eventually hold him accountable. This is Jiang Feng's Vision.

See you next time.