This is Post 2 of 16 in the Taiwan Risk Series. Full series at polarismng.com

KPI #2 — When a General Gets Purged, Pay Attention

PLA Command Cohesion: The Senior Purges Index

What it measures: Number of senior PLA officers investigated or removed in the trailing 12 months.

Military purges are a dual-signal indicator — and understanding both signals is what makes this KPI non-trivial.

Signal one (short term): degraded readiness. Removing senior commanders mid-cycle disrupts planning, breaks trust chains, and suppresses initiative. When the head of China’s Rocket Force — the branch that controls nuclear missiles — is removed alongside his entire leadership team, as happened in 2023, the operational consequences are real. Investigations into missiles filled with water instead of fuel, defective silos, and procurement fraud have raised serious questions about whether PLA equipment would perform as advertised.

Signal two (medium term): intent to perform. Xi Jinping does not purge generals to weaken his military. He purges them to replace loyalty-adjacent commanders with execution-ready ones. Three successive waves — the Rocket Force in 2023, the Political Work Department and CMC Vice Chairman He Weidong in 2025, and CMC Vice Chairman Zhang Youxia plus Chief of Staff Liu Zhenli in January 2026 — suggest a systematic housecleaning ahead of an operational window. January 2026 was the start of the penultimate training cycle before Xi’s 2027 readiness target.

Current status: 🟡 Amber. Multiple high-profile removals across three successive years. The pattern is too consistent to read as routine anti-corruption activity.

📍 Next in the series

KPI #3 — 1,700 Violations in a Single Year. Taiwan’s Air Defence Identification Zone is being probed at a rate that has nearly doubled in twelve months. What that trajectory means for the timeline.

⚡ The consequence to watch

A fully restructured, loyalty-tested PLA command removes the most important internal brake on Xi’s decision-making. When military leadership no longer pushes back on feasibility, the political clock (KPI #10) becomes the dominant variable.

🔧 The drill

Track the China Leadership Monitor (prcleader.org) — it publishes the most reliable open-source analysis of PLA personnel changes. Set a Google Alert for “CMC” + “investigation.” This KPI can move fast.

Sources: Global Guardian Risk Barometer (Feb 2026); Asia Times (March 2026); Institute for Security and Development Policy (June 2025). Full series: polarismng.com