New Delhi: Beijing has issued a new code of ethics for those recruiting for China’s armed forces, with emphasis on political loyalty, integrity and transparent exercise of power against the backdrop of President Xi Jinping’s unprecedented purge of top generals.
The Ministry of National Defence’s Conscription Office published the rules, effective immediately, on 9 August, according to state-run Xinhua News Agency.
The timing is particularly noteworthy. It comes against the backdrop of Xi’s unprecedented purge in a bid to tighten his grip on China’s armed forces. As chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC), he has intensified political education, anti-corruption measures and military reform ahead of the 2027 centenary of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
The new rules follow a 30 July meeting of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Politburo at which Xi called for stronger political guidance and said China should fulfill the goals set for the PLA’s centenary and make “decisive progress” toward realising military modernisation.
The Chinese President also stressed the need to maintain the CCP’s “absolute leadership” over the armed forces, saying military personnel must heed the party’s commands.
He linked political loyalty directly to military effectiveness, while also calling for better combat preparedness, technological innovation and military governance. In particular, he highlighted unmanned intelligent technologies and networked information systems as areas where the PLA should accelerate development.
According to a Xinhua report, the new code of ethics is intended to implement Xi’s “important expositions on moral construction,” and designed around how recruitment officials exercise their duties and authority, establishing “high moral standards”. The code is divided into five sections and contains 25 specific ethical standards.
They propose “professional ethics guidelines for conscription staff to be loyal to the CCP, have a broad vision of the overall situation, perform their duties in accordance with the law and select talent transparently, be concerned about national defence and adhere to standards, be honest and self-disciplined and not seek personal gain, and work together and serve with enthusiasm”.
The report added that the “guidelines also clarify 25 specific ethical norms in each aspect, in order to guide the vast number of conscription staff to uphold lofty values, cultivate strong inner strength, achieve moral cultivation and self-discipline, and continuously create a new atmosphere of righteousness in conscription work”.
Xinhua portrayed the code as part of a wider effort to cultivate values, inner strength, moral discipline and “a new atmosphere of righteousness” in military recruitment.
The push for greater discipline also comes against the backdrop of one of the most extensive purges involving China’s military leadership in recent decades.
In 2025, CCP expelled nine top generals in one of its largest public crackdowns on the military in decades. In January this year, Xi abruptly removed senior generals Zhang Youxia and Liu Zhenli. Zhang Youxia was second only to Xi Jinping and viewed as his closest confidant. In the most stunning purge this year, he was removed allegedly over “grave violations of discipline and the law”, according to a defence ministry statement.
Zhang, 75, was vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission, which controls China’s armed forces and is headed by Xi.
Zhang’s removal marked the fall of the last of the six commanders appointed by Xi to the CMC in 2022. With two of the top-ranking officials now under investigation, the seven-member CMC is only left with one member apart from Xi himself—General Zhang Shengmin, who oversees Xi’s military purges. Zhang was inducted into the CMC in 2017 and promoted in October 2025.
An article published by the Communist Party of China’s People’s Daily around the PLA’s 99th anniversary similarly presented military modernisation as a combination of political loyalty, institutional reform, technological advancement and combat preparedness, a Lowy Institute report noted. The underlying message was that a modern military must be politically reliable as well as technologically capable. Political education and ideological rectification were presented not as separate from combat effectiveness but as foundations for it, it said.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)