‘Nobody is safe’: What Xi’s purges say about his control over China’s military

Singapore: In the end, Zhang Youxia’s downfall was as stunning as it was clinical.

The fate of China’s top general was sealed in a single line of a defence ministry press release on Saturday that accused him of “grave violations of discipline and the law”. But his political demise is not a routine purge. It’s a bombshell to a system that has grown accustomed to President Xi Jinping’s ruthless anti-corruption drives.

“Xi Jinping has completed one of the biggest purges of China’s military leadership in the history of the People’s Republic,” says Neil Thomas, a fellow at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Centre for China Analysis.

Zhang’s ouster, alongside General Liu Zhenli, who was also placed under investigation, all but completes Xi’s decapitation of the top brass of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), handing him total control over the Chinese Communist Party’s military wing.

“Zhang’s removal means that truly nobody in the leadership is safe now,” Jonathan Czin, a former CIA China analyst, told Reuters, saying the probe marked a “profound shift” in Chinese politics.

It also fuels speculation about power struggles and warring factions within the party’s upper echelons. At 75, Zhang was knifed even though he could have been retired at the 21st Party Congress next year, when Xi is expected to seek an unprecedented fourth term in power.

And it raises obvious questions about the PLA’s future direction in particular. What does this mean for Xi’s demand, according to the US intelligence, that the armed forces be capable of executing an invasion of Taiwan by 2027?

‘The official, internal story is not always the truth about what happened.’

One possible explanation advanced by some experts is that disagreement with Xi over PLA development and Taiwan strategy led to the senior officers’ downfall.

“Zhang and Liu likely failed to meet Xi Jinping’s requirements for force building related to a Taiwan invasion, and may even have engaged in open disagreement or defiance within the PLA,” said K.Tristan Tang, from the Pacific Forum think tank, in a report that analysed official PLA statements over recent months.

Corruption and graft has been an endemic problem in PLA, but Xi’s purges have also been used to root out potential disloyalty fermenting in the ranks.

The famous “black box” of Chinese elite politics – untouched by the sunlight of transparency – means we may never know the real reason for Zhang’s political demise. But within hours of his ouster, the rumour mill had cranked into overdrive.

Online, wild speculation circulated that Zhang was mobilising a coup against Xi. The Wall Street Journal published allegations that Zhang was accused of leaking information about the country’s nuclear weapons program to the US, citing anonymous sources who claimed knowledge of a Chinese high-level briefing about the generals.

But this drew heavy scepticism from seasoned China watchers.

“The official, internal story is not always the truth about what happened, so just because they may be telling other officials he leaked nuclear secrets does not mean he actually did,” wrote analyst Bill Bishop in his Sinocism newsletter.

“But it might make for a useful charge internally, as it shows him to be an even greater villain than if he were simply corrupt, as he was working for the main enemy.”

Zhang was expected to survive

As vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission – China’s supreme military decision-making body – Zhang was not just the most senior PLA figure, he was one of the few generals with actual combat experience, albeit from the Sino-Vietnamese conflicts of the 1970s and ’80s.

This fact and his close ties to Xi – the pair grew up together as “princeling” sons of China’s communist revolutionary elite – were thought to be key to his survival as generals were felled around him.

With Zhang and Liu’s removal, Xi has purged all but one of the six generals he appointed to the commission in 2022. Just two remain: Xi himself as chair and Zhang Shengmin (no relation to Zhang Youxia), who has overseen the anti-corruption purges in the military.

Former Pentagon official Drew Thompson, who met Zhang when he travelled to the US for a week-long defence delegation in 2012, said he had heard rumours since 2023 that Zhang was under investigation.

“I assessed that Zhang Youxia’s combat experience, his self-confidence, intellect and life-long commitment to the defence of China and the Communist Party would protect him. I thought that his life-long relationship with Xi Jinping would be his insurance,” Thompson wrote in a Substack essay.

A fiercely worded commentary in the PLA Daily, the official mouthpiece of the armed forces, on Sunday indicated the reasons for Zhang and Liu’s downfall went beyond standard corruption allegations, hinting at political tension.

It accused the generals of having “seriously trampled upon” the system of responsibility under the military commission chairman (Xi) and fuelled “political and corruption problems that weaken the Party’s absolute leadership over the military”.

“This could suggest that Zhang was becoming too powerful for Xi’s liking, or simply that he betrayed the chairman’s trust by helping corrupt the procurement bureaucracy and/or not doing his utmost to create a cleaner fighting force,” says Thomas.

Where to for the PLA and Taiwan?

Some China analysts point to signs that Zhang was likely to have been more conservative on attacking Taiwan than Xi, particularly in the near term.

“I think he could assess US and Taiwan military capabilities objectively and explain to Xi Jinping what the military risks and costs of an operation to take Taiwan would be,” Thompson wrote of Zhang.

“I worry about the consequences of someone other than Zhang Youxia providing Xi Jinping with military advice.”

Tang concluded that Zhang likely saw Xi’s 2027 timeline for military readiness on Taiwan as unachievable and “clearly placed this goal closer to 2035”. Together with Liu, “their presence instead posed a challenge to Xi’s authority”, he wrote.

“Although the probability of achieving the 2027 Taiwan invasion capability remains extremely low, Xi Jinping will likely appoint successors who are willing to execute his military blueprint in place of Zhang and Liu.”

Thomas assesses that China’s threat toward Taiwan is now “weaker in the short term but stronger in the long term”.

A high command in disarray, he said, increases the gamble for Xi of massive military escalation, but in the longer term, “a less corrupt, more loyal, and more capable military could more credibly coerce Taipei into submission and deter Washington from intervening”.

For now, one thing is clear. Xi is in total control of China’s military and will stop at nothing to secure absolute loyalty.

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