Speaker: Andrew S. Erickson, Visiting Scholar, Harvard University Asia Center; Professor, Founding Member, and Former Research Director, China Maritime Studies Institute, US Naval War College

Are rampant removals of top officials from China’s Navy and other services, as well as the defense industry supporting them, decapitating its military advancement? Or do the benefits somehow exceed the costs, at least in the view of PRC paramount leader Xi Jinping? What is the relationship between leadership turnover, organizational disruption, and China’s naval and broader military modernization? This lecture probes an apparent paradox: even as unprecedented purges remove senior officers and defense-industry leaders, China’s military—and particularly its navy—continues to expand and improve at a formidable pace. Employing a “forest and trees” metaphor, this talk argues that analysts risk mistaking extraordinary personnel turbulence for institutional paralysis. Xi’s removals undoubtedly impose costs, disrupt leadership networks, and expose persistent corruption and political dysfunction, but they coexist with—and may in some respects even facilitate—continued capability development.

China possesses unusually deep pools of personnel, industrial capacity, technology, infrastructure, and state-directed resources, while the system under Xi prioritizes political reliability alongside operational competence and rapidly replaces leaders deemed corrupt, disloyal, or ineffective. The resulting “forest” continues to flourish: China’s military is fielding increasingly sophisticated platforms and munitions, expanding production capacity, improving training realism and joint integration, and sustaining an intensifying operational tempo. Nowhere are these trends more visible and consequential than in the maritime domain and around Taiwan, where increasingly complex exercises rehearse coercion, blockade, precision-strike, and invasion-related capabilities. Pervasive corruption and repeated removals represent important vulnerabilities, but they should not be assumed to derail China’s military buildup. Individual trees are falling at a remarkable rate, but the larger armed forces forest grows rapidly regardless.

Disclaimer: The views expressed by Dr. Erickson are his alone, based solely on open sources and offered from an independent academic perspective. They do not represent the policies or estimates of the U.S. Navy or any other organization of the U.S. government, or of any other organization with which he is affiliated. Dr. Erickson is presenting in his personal capacity, not as an employee of the U.S. government.