Former CIA Analyst Says Xi Relies Heavily on Peng Liyuan’s PLA Connections

Commentary

Chinese leader Xi Jinping may be relying heavily on his wife Peng Liyuan’s extensive personal connections within the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), according to a former senior U.S. intelligence official, drawing attention to the first lady’s little-understood role in China’s military establishment.

Dennis Wilder, a former CIA China analyst who served on the National Security Council during the George W. Bush administration, said Peng possesses a network within the PLA that Xi himself lacks. “Xi relies very much on her Rolodex,” Wilder said. “He doesn’t have a PLA Rolodex like she has.”

Peng spent decades as one of China’s best-known military singers before Xi rose to the Communist Party’s top leadership position. Her career took her to military commands across China, where she performed for troops and attended functions alongside senior officers.

That history, Wilder argued, gave her firsthand familiarity with generations of PLA officials and insight into relationships and loyalties within the institution.

A career built inside the PLA

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Peng joined the PLA as a young performer and eventually attained a civilian military rank equivalent to major general. In 2012, she became head of the PLA Academy of Art, which was later incorporated into the National Defense University during Xi’s military restructuring. Her official role after leaving the academy has remained opaque.

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In 2024, a photograph circulated online identifying Peng as a full-time member of the Central Military Commission Cadre Assessment Committee, an obscure body reportedly involved in evaluating senior military personnel. According to reporting cited at the time, the CMC Cadre Assessment Committee is involved in evaluating political records, loyalty, military competence and personal conduct, and may recommend candidates to the Organization Bureau of the CMC Political Work Department.

If accurate, that would place Peng within a personnel system that can influence how senior military leaders are vetted and promoted. Wilder said Peng’s work appears to fall within the PLA’s cadre-evaluation apparatus, which scrutinizes military leadership.

The possibility has attracted particular interest because control over promotions and political loyalty has become increasingly important as Xi carries out one of the most extensive upheavals in the PLA’s senior ranks in decades.

Military leadership restructured

In October 2025, Chinese authorities expelled nine senior military officials from the Communist Party and armed forces, including Central Military Commission Vice Chairman He Weidong and former Political Work Department director Miao Hua. Beijing said the officials were suspected of serious disciplinary and duty-related violations involving exceptionally large sums of money.

The purge deepened in 2026. Former CMC Vice Chairman Zhang Youxia and Joint Staff Department chief Liu Zhenli were formally removed from the commission in August and expelled from the Party and military in September. Chinese authorities accused the pair of serious disciplinary and legal violations, while state media also emphasized allegations of political disloyalty. Their cases were transferred to military prosecutors.

The successive removals have dramatically altered the senior command surrounding Xi and intensified outside scrutiny of how Beijing now vets and promotes military officers from within.

Australian-based Chinese legal scholar Yuan Hongbing has gone even further, claiming that Peng has “exercised substantial influence” over senior military appointments and that officers were previously required to seek her views on promotions.