Actually what I mean by decapitation is the PLARF commander and commissar (or even the commander and commissar of the entire Theatre Command) gets taken out since an adversary may have the intelligence of there the commanders and their families live and hide. It is like how the US and Israel were able to track down the Iranian supreme leader and all senior members of IRGC. It is also how the Ukrainians were able to hunt down senior Russian military officials outside their apartments. And during times of war, I would not rule out the possibility of several PLARF brigadier commanders being taken out right before a majour strike against Taiwan. I mean Washington already knows the names and addresses of pretty much every single PLARF flag officer and his unit locations.
To continue on what I wrote, I am suddenly recalling a conversation I had about 12 years ago with a Chinese colleague. He's just a grad student with no special privileges or insider knowledge so take from it what you will but he said that there was very serious corruption in the upper ranks of the PLA. Many high ranking officers had investments and bank accounts in the US and children/spouses in the US. They would be the main enemy China faces in a conflict. He added that in the end, if there was a Sino-American conflict, he believes that China would still win, but with depth, not with initial success. He says he thinks that China will start the conflict very poorly and take significant damage, but then, the corruption will be revealed and either those old rotten generals will be killed or exposed and imprisoned. Once that happens, a young new generation of leadership will take over the PLA; ascended on merit, forged through hardship, driven by determination and unhindered by corruption, they will make China an unstoppable force and lead it to victory.
I didn't really think much about what he said... but now to think of it, a lot of old PLA generals were just purged by Xi, weren't they?
