To Western eyes, Senior Colonel Xu Yunpeng (徐云鹏) might appear as a political functionary—transitioning from Director of the Propaganda Bureau, PLA Western Theater Command Political Work Department in 2018 to Director of the CMC Political Work Department’s Network Opinion Bureau by 2021. However, inside the Chinese Communist Party’s military architecture, the political work department is the nerve center for ideological mobilization, narrative warfare, and legal-institutional engineering.
Across both the 13th National People’s Congress (NPC) 1st Session in 2018 and the 4th Session in 2021, Xu stood shoulder-to-shoulder with senior combat commanders—including Eastern Theater Command Chief He Weidong, Joint Logistics Commissar Wang Wenquan, and Eastern Theater Vice Commander Gu Xiangbing—to lay down the ideological and legal groundwork for PLA global force projection.
A deep analysis of Xu’s parliamentary statements exposes two core operational pillars: engineering domestic and international legal alignment for out-of-area operations and restructuring political incentives to drive combat readiness.
1. International Legal Alignment: Constructing the Shield for “Going Out” (走出去)
“We must pay attention to integrating with international military regulations, drawing on the governance experience of developed nations’ militaries, and studying international law issues involved in overseas missions—providing powerful support for military forces ‘going out’.”
Xu’s 2018 address laid bare an essential component of Beijing’s expeditionary doctrine: legal warfare and normative integration.
For the PLA to project power globally—along the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) corridors, in the Indian Ocean, or across overseas logistics hubs like Djibouti—it cannot operate in a legal vacuum. Xu demanded that Chinese defense legislation preemptively harmonize with international maritime, air, and conflict law.
By mirroring the statutory frameworks used by Western militaries for expeditionary deployments, Beijing creates a domestic and international legal pretense to sanction troop deployments, maritime blockades, and non-war military operations (MOOTW) while deflecting global scrutiny.
2. Eliminating Legislative Friction: The Integration of Military and Local Law
“We must connect with national and local legislation, preventing the occurrence of regulatory systems that ‘do not touch the sky above nor the ground below’...”
Xu highlighted a chronic structural failure in Chinese military governance: jurisdictional disconnect between civilian laws and military mandates.
Xu’s demand for top-down legislative integration ensures that when a theater command issues requisitions for civilian transport, medical infrastructure, or big-data networks, local civilian governments are legally bound to comply without administrative delay or regulatory conflict.
3. Combat-Oriented Honor Systems: Engineering the Warfare Mindset
“Focus all work on preparing for and winning wars... We must address the issue where the honor, reward, and punishment systems do not lean sufficiently toward combat readiness.”
Political commissars do not merely monitor ideology; they manipulate institutional incentives. Xu identified a legacy vulnerability in the PLA: peacetime promotion and awards were historically tied to administrative safety, political conformity, and risk avoidance rather than tactical mastery.
Xu mandated a top-down overhaul of the PLA’s internal reward structure, tying decorations, promotions, and financial benefits strictly to “combat readiness and major mission performance.” By restructuring the career incentives for millions of active-duty personnel, the Party actively incentivizes a war-footing culture across every level of the ranks.
XU YUNPENG'S DUAL-TRACK FRAMEWORK
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Central Military Commission Political Work |
| Senior Colonel Xu Yunpeng (NPC Delegate) |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------------+
|
+----------------------------+----------------------------+
| |
v v
+---------------------------------+ +---------------------------------+
| External Legal Scaffolding | | Internal Psychological Drive |
| - Align with international law | | - Overhaul honors and rewards |
| - Legal protection for "Going | | - Tie promotion to war readiness|
| Out" (Out-of-Area Missions) | | - Eliminate peacetime risk- |
| - Seamless civil-military code | | aversion culture |
+---------------------------------+ +---------------------------------+
4. The 2021 Network Opinion Mandate: Narrative Dominance in High-Intensity Conflict
By March 2021, Xu’s elevation to Director of the Network Opinion Bureau under the CMC Political Work Department placed him at the center of China’s cognitive domain operations (Cognitive Domain Warfare).
During the 2021 PLA delegation meeting—where commanders focused on “accelerating military struggle preparations” and the 14th Five-Year Plan—Xu’s role shifted from statutory policy to cyberspace narrative control and public opinion management.
In modern warfare, physical combat is preceded and accompanied by information control. Under Xu’s bureau, controlling the “network opinion” environment ensures internal political cohesion during crises, neutralizes anti-war sentiment, and executes external disinformation operations during theater-level escalations (such as maneuvers surrounding Taiwan or the South China Sea).
Strategic Summary
Senior Colonel Xu Yunpeng represents the ideological and legal architects who operationalize Xi Jinping’s military vision. While combat commanders deploy hardware, figures like Xu construct the international legal justifications, local statutory mechanisms, psychological incentives, and cognitive warfare tools required to sustain aggression at home and project military power abroad.
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