Did China just demote its defense ministry?

Among the most significant personnel changes of the Chinese Communist Party’s recent Third Plenum meeting are two that didn’t happen: Adm. Dong Jun, the country’s defense minister, was neither added to the Central Military Commission nor appointed a State Councilor. This is an apparent demotion for the defense ministry, and could complicate the military-to-military relationship between China and the United States.

Traditionally, the head of the Ministry of National Defense of the People’s Republic of China has been a member of the Party and state CMCs. That gave the incumbent direct access to Xi Jinping, who—along with being president of the People’s Republic of China and the Party’s General Secretary—is CMC chairman. The defense minister typically has also been a State Councilor, granting him status equal to the other national-level ministers and giving him direct access to the Chinese premier, the second-ranking Party leader and the PRC’s head of government. 

Admiral Dong remains at the head of the defense ministry, which primarily is responsible for managing the Chinese armed forces’ relations with other entities: externally with foreign militaries and the press, and internally with the other national-level ministries and agencies and with local governments for conscription and recruiting. The defense minister is not in the direct chain of command for combat operations, nor is he a member of the Party’s highest decision-making bodies, the Politburo and its Standing Committee. Like his 13 predecessors, Dong is an active-duty three-star general officer, the PLA’s highest rank; unlike them, he is an admiral—a former commander of the PLA Navy, the first naval officer appointed to his job.

He received that job in December, shortly after the Biden-Xi summit and roughly two months after Gen. Li Shangfu was unexpectedly removed from office. Since then he has met with numerous foreign counterparts and attended high-profile events such as the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, where he engaged with U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin III.

Leaving Dong off the powerful CMC puts a question mark on the admiral’s access to Xi and his influence within the Chinese political system. Further, Xi has removed Dong’s two immediate predecessors: Li and Gen. Wei Fenghe. That makes Dong’s status appear to be an intentional effort to downgrade the defense minister’s role in the Party-state bureaucracy.

Dong may now be required to report first to a CMC vice chairman—Zhang Youxia or He Weidong—or perhaps even one of three other CMC members. Indeed, if Dong lacks direct access to Xi, the U.S. Defense Secretary may prefer to speak directly to a CMC vice chairman whose responsibilities within the Chinese system are better aligned to that of the Pentagon’s most senior civilian leader, as was the case several years ago.

It gets more complicated. Dong’s move from PLAN commander to defense minister was a lateral transfer in grade: he retains status equivalent to its five Theater Commanders and four service chiefs. But the U.S. Defense Department continues to emphasize engagement between the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command and the PLA’s Southern and Eastern Theater Commands, a step below the Minister-Secretary level. If China’s defense minister is not in the chain of command or on the CMC, what role does he have in these dialogues between operational commanders?

In the State Council, Dong is outranked by Wang Xiaohong, a State Councilor and minister of Public Security. This suggests a limited role for Dong as an advocate for military affairs within the State Council and during national policy-setting.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has gained clout within the Chinese bureaucracy since last year’s replacement of its leader Qin Gang by Wang Yi, a Politburo member.

The “Dong Jun surprise” might be signaling that military diplomacy—particularly its military-to-military contacts with the United States—remains low on Beijing’s priority list. Instead, China’s engagement agenda with the world is led by the Foreign Ministry’s Global Security Initiative. Launched in April 2022 by Xi Jinping, the initiative aims to promote a vision of “an alternative to the U.S.-led international order.” 

Moreover, China’s military is reducing its transparency; for example, it has been over five years since it released its last defense white paper. Meanwhile, military exercises and “patrols” with Russia and other foreign militaries continue unabated, including with old and new partners in Africa. And Beijing has not abandoned attempts to improve bilateral relations with U.S. allies, such as Japan and France, perhaps aiming to create daylight between alliance members.

Historically whenever the U.S.-PRC relations were tense, the military-to-military component was often the first to suffer. For now, China’s senior leaders appear to be in no rush to elevate Admiral Dong, nor to engage in substantive military-to-military dialogue with the United States. If anything, Beijing is downplaying both. China may perceive the military component as leverage to achieve political agreement on Chinese proposals for what it considers the fundamental basis for the bilateral relationship. The U.S. side does not need to adopt Beijing’s framing of the bilateral relationship. But at a minimum, both sides should agree that “to jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war.” And as the Chinese and American saying goes, where there is a will, there is a way.

Shanshan Mei is a political scientist at RAND. She previously served as the special assistant to the 22nd chief of staff of the Air Force for China and Indo-Pacific issues. 

Dennis J. Blasko is a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel with 23 years of service as a military intelligence officer and foreign area officer specializing in China. From 1992 to 1996, he was an Army attaché in Beijing and Hong Kong. He has written numerous articles and chapters on the Chinese military, along with the book The Chinese Army Today: Tradition and Transformation for the 21st Century.

The views in this article are those of the authors alone and not those of any institution they are or have been affiliated with.