This article examines Chinese civil–military relations using a bottom-up analytical approach and hitherto untapped sources, including interviews with military personnel in active service. It argues that traditional approaches to political control, which generally interpret the changing political–military relationship through military professionalism and institutional autonomy, miss out on important aspects and may generate erroneous conclusions. Here, focus is instead on the professional autonomy of the Chinese officer corps. Through an empirical study of the organization of military work at two of China's top military education institutes, the article illustrates how professional autonomy and direct political control vary, both between hierarchical levels and issue areas. This highlights the multidimensionality of both control and professional manoeuvrability and underlines the fruitfulness of including an intra-organizational perspective in order to reach better informed conclusions about political control and civil–military relations in today's China.
