What to Know About China’s Military Purges

Xi Jinping has spent three years gutting his own military leadership. Five of the seven members of the Central Military Commission – China's supreme military authority – have been purged since 2023, all of whom were handpicked by Xi himself back in 2022. But if anyone seemed safe from the carnage, it was Zhang Youxia.

Zhang wasn't just China's most senior uniformed military officer. He was a fellow “princeling” whose father fought alongside Xi's in the revolution, a combat-tested general who distinguished himself in the 1979 war with Vietnam, and someone who had backed Xi since he first rose to power in 2012.

And yet, on Jan. 24, Beijing announced that Zhang and another CMC member, Liu Zhenli, were under investigation for “suspected serious discipline and law violations.” In practical terms, that means detention and dismissal. Official PLA media accused them of causing “damage to combat capability construction,” a phrase suggesting problems that go well beyond ordinary corruption. Wild rumors have swirled about what really happened. Some online chatter ties Zhang to a foiled coup attempt against Xi; a Wall Street Journal report suggests he leaked nuclear secrets to the United States. Color me skeptical of both.

What's more likely, and plenty alarming in its own right, is that this reflects Xi's deepening paranoia and mistrust. Zhang had accumulated significant power simply by surviving the earlier purges, and his combat pedigree, reputation for competence, and princeling status made him a potential rival in Xi's eyes. By removing him, Xi blocks the formation of an alternative power center that might one day defy his rule and sends an unmistakable message to every party leader, military commander, and provincial official in China: whatever authority you hold is delegated, not owned. Loyalty guarantees nothing; no one is ever truly safe. Once that lesson sinks in, officials become consumed not with whether they've done anything wrong but with whether they might be next. Taking initiative becomes riskier than doing nothing. The ambitious learn to keep their heads down; the cautious get promoted. Honest information stops flowing upward. Problems don't get flagged until they're crises.