Taiwan-China Cross-Strait Tensions

China's Military Doctrine Shift, 'Persistent Struggle' and Loyalty Tests at Fifth Plenum

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China’s Fifth Plenum is putting political loyalty, military purges and the People Liberation Army’s (PLA’s) readiness under intense scrutiny as Xi Jinping prepares the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) for the 2027 Party Congress. The meeting is expected to focus heavily on Party discipline and personnel reshuffles, with China’s Central Military Commission (CMC) severely depleted after the removal of senior generals including Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli. While the PLA continues to modernize its hardware, questions are growing over whether repeated purges have weakened command cohesion, professional judgment and what some analysts call its “intangible combat capability.” Could a thinner, more loyalty-driven command structure affect Beijing’s military calculations over Taiwan? In this episode, we examine what makes this Fifth Plenum unusual, what the personnel changes reveal about Xi’s control over the Party and military and whether China’s 2027 Taiwan capability timeline still carries the same weight. *Recorded on October 22, 2026 at 2pm Taiwan Standard Time Host: Wen-Ti Sung Producer: Suvam Pal Videographer: Damon Lin Our guests: Devendra Kumar - Shiv Nadar University Centre for Himalayan Studies Associate Fellow Wei-Feng Tzeng - National Chengchi University Institute of International Relations Associate Research Fellow