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A lot happens every day. Alliances shift, leaders change, and conflicts erupt. With In Brief, we’ll help you make sense of it all. Each week, experts will dig deep on a single issue happening in the world to help you better understand it.***In the past few months, China has seen shakeups at the highest levels of the government and military — first, in June, Foreign Minister Qin Gang mysteriously disappeared from his duties and, in July, was formally replaced by Wang Yi. Then, at the beginning of August, General Secretary Xi Jinping abruptly dismissed two top generals in the People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force, the elite group tasked with controlling China’s expanding nuclear arsenal. We asked five experts to tell us more about these changes, what they could mean, and if they could be the beginning of a broader purge.Read more below.Rorry Daniels Managing Director Asia Society Policy InstituteThe latest news from Beijing shows that elite political struggles are alive and well in China, no matter how Xi Jinping tries to stack the deck against rivals. Discontent that is unsafe to voice in opposition to Xi himself is being redirected toward outing Xi’s proteges for corruption or collusion — a trend likely to continue. Make no mistake, Xi remains deeply in control of China’s policy direction and particularly of the People’s Liberation Army. But with the bureaucracy frozen by rapidly shifting political winds, implementation of Xi’s policy agenda will be increasingly difficult until a new factional balance of power is found. Thomas Shugart Adjunct Senior Fellow Center for a New American SecurityWhile the simultaneous firing/purging of the Rocket Force’s commander and political commissar is an eyebrow-raiser on its own, their replacement by People’s Liberation Army Navy and Air Force officers, respectively, is what really seizes my attention. While some have attributed