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Chinese President Xi Jinping promotes 170 PLA officers in move to streamline ranking system
- Move designed to align senior officers’ ranks with their place in the broader hierarchy
- Current system creates loopholes, opportunities for corruption, observers say
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Chinese President Xi Jinping last week promoted more than 170 senior military officers as part of an ongoing reform of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) designed to align people’s ranks with their place in the broader hierarchy.
The move came after the release on December 8 of a circular aimed at providing clearer procedures for the promotion of officers with the rank of major general or above across all branches of the armed forces.
The mass promotion was the biggest ever carried out by Xi, who also chairs the Central Military Commission.
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A long-running problem within the PLA has been the lack of correlation between rank and status. For example, a corps commander with the rank of colonel would have seniority over a division leader with the rank of major general – a situation that would be impossible in most other militaries around the world.
While the dual system created loopholes and bred corruption, earlier attempts to reform it failed because of resistance from top Communist Party leaders and others with a vested interest to maintain the status quo.
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